The Urbanist #518 - Nov 12 - 10 Diagrams that Changed Planning by saikofish

OSPUR Ideas + action for a better city

Issue 518/November 2012

THE URBANIST

GRAND REDUCTIONS

10 DIAGRAMS THAT CHANGED PLANNING

NOVEMBER 2012

NewsatSPUR Feds Give Go-Ahead for High-Speed Rail Construction In September, the federal government approved con st ruction of the first part of Califo rnia's hig h- speed rail net w o rk, a 55 - m ile str etch bet w een Merced and Fresno, and t he Whi t e Ho use approved exped ited pe rm it ti ng . A s a result, co nst ruction in t he Centra l Valley cou ld begin early next year, barring lawsuit s designed to delay the project. A lso in September, th e Californ ia Transportat ion Comm ission voted to release $40 m illion for Caltrain to inve st in a new train control syst em. In addition to allowi ng train s to operate close r together, and thus add serv ice to me et growing demand (Caltrain already has more than 50,000 average riders daily and t his month added six new t rain s pe r day), th e train control system is a necessary step t oward swi tc hing Caltrai n fro m d iesel to electric power, wh ich wi ll allow it t o share tracks with hig h-speed rail.

BRT Approved in the South Bay In Septemb er the Valley Transportation Auth or it y ( VTA) board reaffirmed its support for a 17.3-m ile bus rapid tr ansit ( BRT) proje ct connecting San Jose, Santa Clara, Sunnyvale, Mountain View, Los Altos and Palo Alto along EI Camino

Real, the " Main Street" of Silicon Valley. After the cit ies of Mountain View and Sunnyvale both voted against ded icated bus-onl y lanes on EI Camino Real, th e VTA board could have elected to slow down or abandon the proje ct altoge t her. Instead, board members decided to cont inue with a project t hat

Executive Vice Chair AnneHalsted Vice Chairs AlexaArena Emilio Cruz David Friedman Bill Rosetti LydiaTan V. Fei Tsen Secretary Mary McCue Treasurer Bob Gamble Immediate Past Co-Chairs Andy Barnes LeeBlitch

Advisory Council Co-Chairs Michael Alexander PaulSedway Board Members Carl Anthony Veronica Bell ChrisBlock Larry Burnett MichaelaCassidy MadelineChun Michael Cohen CharmaineCurtis Gia Da niller-Katz OzErickson Manny Flores GillianGillett ChrisGruwell Dave Hartley Aidan Hughes Mary Huss

Central Subway Receives Federal Funds At long last, t he $1.6 billion Centra l Subway projec t, a longtime priori ty for SPUR, has been given the stamp of app roval from the Federal Transit Adm inistr ation (FTA). On October n, the San Francisco Municipal Transit Ag ency (SFMTA) of ficia lly received th e Full Funding Grant Agr eement for Phase II of the T-Third line. This will provide th e SFMTA wit h $942 millio n under t he FTA's

Capital Investm ent Progr am (also know n as "N ew Starts") and allow f ull constr uctio n to begin on t he 1.7-m ile line that will run from the Calt rain station at Fourth and King st reets to Chinatown and include four new stati ons.

Local Vehicle License Fee Signed by Governor Brown After an eight-year lapse, San Francisco will again have th e abi lity to raise vehicle license fees on locally registered vehicles to benefit local services. SB 1492 enables the Board of Supervi sors, by a two -thirds major ity vot e, to submit to vot ers a measure to restore t he local VLF to a maximum of 2 percent of a vehicle's value - up from the current limit of 0.65 percent enacted by form er Governor Arn old Schwarzenegger in 20 0 4. If San Francisco voters restor e the VLF to th e maximum of 2 percent, t he fee could generate up to $75 million per year for city services. -

CHAIRS & COMMITTEES

SPUR BOARD OF DIRECTORS

Chair lindaJoFitz

includ es dedicated bus-only lanes in Santa Clara and mixed-fl ow travel (i.e., buses t ravel in lanes wit h cars) in citi es to th e nort h. VTA also agreed that th e project's environmental impact report wou ld study an alternati ve plan for ded icated lanes throughout the corridor, in case oth er Sout h Bay cities do become suppo rt ive of dedicated lanes. VTA will formal ize th ese recomm endations at its November board meetin g.

ChrisIglesias Laurie Johnson Ken Kirkey Dick Lonergan Ellen Lou JanisMacKenzie John Madden JacintaMcCann ChrisMeany EzraMersey Terry Micheau Mary Murphy Jeanne Myerson Adhi Nagraj Brad Paul ChrisPoland Teresa Rea ByronRhett WadeRose VictorSeeto Elizabeth Seifel Carl Shannon

Chi-HsinShao OntarioSmith Bill Stotler Stuart Sunshine MichaelTeitz MikeTheriault JamesTracy Will Travis Jeff Tumlin SteveVettel DebraWalker CynthiaWiluszLovell CindyWu

Program Comm ittees BallotAnalysis Bob Gamble Disaster Planning LaurieJohnson ChrisPoland Housing EzraMersey Lyd iaTan Project Review CharmaineCurtis Mary BethSanders ReubenSchwartz Transportation Anthony Bruzzone Water Policy Board BrySartre GoodGovernment Bob Gamble

Regional Planning Larry Burnell libby Seifel Operallng Committees Audit John Madden Nomlnallng Stuart Sunshine Building Management Larry Burnett Business Membership Tom Hart Terry Micheau Execullve li ndaJoFitz AnneHalsted

SAN JOSE

Finance Bob Gamble Human Resources Mary McCue Individual Membership Bill Stotler Investment Ann Lazarus Major Donors li ndaJoFitz AnneHalsted Planned Giving MichaelaCassidy SilverSPUR DaveHartley Teresa Rea

ADVISORY BOARD

Teresa Alvarado Andy Barnes ChrisBlock J.Richard Braugh Larry Burnell BrianDa rrow GordonFeller KarlaRodriguez Lomax JamesMacGregor ConnieMartinez AnuNatarajan Dr. Mohammad Qayoumi Robert Steinberg, FAIA LydiaTan KimWalesh JessicaZenk

GRA ND REDUCT IO NS

BAY or RIVER ?

Grand Reductions: 10 Diagrams That Changed City Planning

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FIGURE 1

The "Bayor River?" diagram helped galvanize supportfor Save the Bay in thesixties.

Many ideas that have most influenced the shape of our cities have been expressed through simple diagrams that have become iconic distillations of values, policy agendas and ideologies By Benjam in Grant

Benjamin Grant isSPUR 's Public Realmand

The powe r of visual communicat ion lies in its abilit y to convey urban ideas and th e impact - for bett er or worse - th ose ideas have had on urban communit ies and discourses.

"Planning indu lg es in the same world of imag e making that ar tists and adver tisers do. Some of th ese images are at once analytical diagrams and ar tful, even mesmerizing, im ages. If p lanners have opted most often for dry imag ery, it is still imag ery, with all of the complicate d and rich imp lications of that term. Every pl an is an act of persuasion, an arg ument for an alternative way of life that attempts to p osit or convince an audience of that alterna tive." - Andrew Shanken

Urban DesignProgram Manager Special Thanks to Peter Bosselmann, Noah Christman, John Ellis, AndyShanken, Daniel Solomon, Joshua Switzky, Michael Teitz, JeffreyTumlin andJennifer Warburg

T HE URBANIST

Many of the ideas th at have most influenced th e shape of cit ies have been expressed through diagrams - simple visual statements that distill part icular values, ideologies and policy agendas. A few have become iconic images, inspiring imitati on,

elabo rat ion and crit ique. They are touchstones in th e visual lexicon of urban planning and design. This issue of The Urb anist and th e accompanying exhibit ion at t he SPUR Urban Center gallery invest igate t he iconography of city planning and th e impa ct - for bett er or worse - of these images on th e shape of urban communities in the United States. As new technologies enable new kinds of visualizatio n, we pause for a look back at th e f ield 's visual cult ure th roug h 10 of its most influ enti al diagrams, asking not only w hat planners were thin king about cities but also how th ey used th e power of imag ery to persuade and to communicate. To planners, many of th e images in thi s illust rated to ur are inst antl y recognizable. Oth ers may find t hem brand new or perhaps strangely familiar, eit her because th ey've been wide ly repr odu ced or because of th e familiar places they've shaped and inspired. Consider New York Cit y's 191 6 Zoning Resolution. Some planning geeks may know it s original illust rat ions. A few more will recognize Hugh Ferriss' vivid renderings of it s impact on a th eoretical site or Frit z Lang's imaginary city from the 1927 film Metrop olis. But nearly everyone w ill recogni ze th e Chrysler and Empire State bu ildings and th e unmistakable form of midcentur y Got ham th at th e po licy generated. Similarly, the tow nship and sect ion grid created by t he 1785 Land Ordi nance (see p. 9) may seem like a bit of arcane Federal Land Off ice history - until one connects it to th e view of th e Midwest fr om an

NOV EMB ER 2012

GRAND REDUCT IONS

airplane window, with its endless one-mi le-by-onemile gr id subdivided into square farm plots with pivot-irrigat ion circles. Fly at night into Chicago, Las Vegas or Phoenix, and the imp licat ions of this simple diagram on urb an form become vividly apparent.

What Is a Diagram? The word "diagram " (literally "ma rked out by lines" in Greek) refers to any schematic visual exp lanation of an idea. Diagrams take advantage of t he differences betwee n how our min ds process language and how th ey process images. They are ofte n set alongside a writ ten or verbal argument to highli ght a particu larly impo rta nt idea. Charts, grap hs and maps are all diagrams, and their particu lar syntax - of lines, arrows and shapes, of ten mixed with lang uage - di ffers fr om th e illustr ative repr esentat ion in draw ings and phot ogr aphs. Diagrams seem to have a special power when it comes to th e representati on of place since th ey are able to comb ine spatial and no nspatia l ideas. Pictures and data . Real and imagined worlds . Abstract ideas and concrete proposals . In thi s way, t he diagr am becomes a remarkably fertile space in which to expl ore th e shaping of cit ies.

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What Doesa Diagram Do? The power of a diagram is reductive: It disti lls a comple x idea into a simple and powerful visual statement. Its clarity results from omission as much as inclusion, so it is ofte n achieved at th e expense of nuance and specificit y. Unencumb ered by pragmatic concerns, diagr ams allow for experimentat ion and imaginat ive leaps. At th eir wo rst, diagrams can become bases for exclusion or margi nalization . The clean, compelling illustrations of the modernist city, with its abundant green space and eff icient orga nizat ion, helped cement th e idea of "slum clearance" und er th e federal urban renewal pro gr ams of th e 1950 s and '6 0s, for example. But at t heir best, d iagrams crystallize emerging points of view, framing challenges and cho ices in a new light, as when the Oakland Tri bun e's arresting 1961 "Bay or River?" gra phic helped to spur major new prot ect ions for San Francisco Bay. Similarly, th e use of figure-gr ound maps by urb an designers in th e 1970s (see p. 16) vivi dly expressed t he nebulous idea of urba n pat tern, making t he case fo r its value in planning decisions . Once an insurgent view takes hold, its imagery often comes to represent a new orthodoxy, beco ming t he target of new criti ques and new assert ions. 4

NO VEMBER 2012

Maps, Plans and Plan View Every map is a diagram, in th e sense th at a map is an abstr acted representat ion of some but not all facet s of a place. This is essential: A road map that showed th e deta ils of the electrica l powe r grid and mineral resources would be unnecessarily confusing . Most maps compress bot h the curvat ure of t he earth and it s top ography onto a two-d imensional plane wit h vary ing degrees of rigor, a leap of abstr action so commo nplace th at we scarcely not ice it. Ar tists at least since Robert Rauschenberg have been work ing to confound th at plane, and more recent ly, new tools f rom computer-aided design (CAD) to geographic information systems (GIS) have allowed desig ners to approac h it ever mo re dy namically. It is wo rt h remembe ring, however, th at even th e onceunim aginable tri ck of casually flyin g thr ough a thr eedimensional landscape on one's desktop st ill happens on a flat surface . Our newfound technical prowess has only deepened our reliance on pictoria l space. The word "p lan" implie s foretho ught and aspirat ion, not simp ly a represent ation of what is. But at tim es, map s and plans converge. The contextualist

FIGURE 2

Renaissance idealcitiesinspired by Vitruvius (15th-16th c.) 1. Filarete, 2. Fra Giocondo, 3. Girolamo Maggi, 4. Giorgio Vasari, 5.Antonio Lupicini, 6. Daniele Barbaro, 7. Pietro Cattaneo, 8/9 di Giorgio Martini.

THE URBANIST

FIGURE 3

Acontemporary aerial viewof thecity of Palma nova (1593), anItalianmilitary settlement based ona Vitruvianplan.

revolt in city planning in th e 1960 s and '70s insisted that a major part of th e di sciplin e consists of analytica l mapp ing of existing condit ions, in cont rast wit h th e grandiose erasures of mod ernist urbanism. The cognit ive mappin g of planners like Kevin Lynch and Donald Appleya rd pref igured t he explosion of alternat ive cartog raphy and data visualizat ion now made possible by dig ital media. The too ls of cartog raphy - and its tacit filt ering of reality - have been radically democratized, and map-making has become a di scourse in which art ists, act ivists, tech nerds and planners can assert the ir ow n visions of what is and what ought to be. Plans and maps share a visual system called "ichnogra phy" or simply "p lan view:' a short hand th at rep resents every poi nt as if th e viewer is di rect ly above it. looking down. Of course, in any real aerial view, only one po int is seen thi s way, with all others seen at an oblique angle th at increases wit h dista nce. Plan view is all-seeing, god -like, but also decept ive and illusory. Keeping th e viewer at a comfo rtab le dista nce, it hides not only t he thi rd dim ension but t he dynamic, tempor al and sensual qualit ies of place.

Utopian Templates Periods of great social and cultural upheaval have often prod uced upsurges of utopian t hinking. To a surprising degree, ideal societies come with a recipe fo r goo d urb an form , embo dying th e values of their proponents and colored by t he anxieties of th eir circumstance. In Renaissance Italy, art ists and designers joined in th e broader humanist ic assert ion t hat society could and should be shaped by human ideals. Hemmed in by t he t angled, narrow medieval st reets around th em, th ey became fascinated wit h ideal cit ies, imagining serene and unpop ulated spaces, out of ti me and out of any real place. The too ls of perspecti ve and T HE URBAN IST

the development of abstract rules of proportion and symmetry made space it self an objec t of st udy. Many seized on and repeatedly imi tated an ideal city described (b ut never illustrated) by the ancient Roman architect Vitruviu s, rediscovered in t he 15t h cent ury. The radially symmet rical fo rm is beautiful in plan view and lends itself to t he kind of abstract. crystalline order th at popu lated Renaissance dreams. A few Vitr uvian cities were act ually const ructed, largely for military purposes, but, unable to evolve, th ey could only be frozen curiosit ies. Renaissance designers di d find ways to graft mom ents of serene order into existing medieva l cities, showi ng that even th e most utopian of ideas can find some increment al expression in t he city. Renaissance ideal cities reveal a few of the fund amenta l powe rs - and also some of th e shortco mings - of planning diagrams. First, t hey are every place and no place, clearly representing urb an space in plan view but wit h no geog raphical references, and t herefore none of t he contex t or const raint th at comes with building act ual cit ies. Second, th ey contr ibute to a broa der discour se abo ut societ al ideals and how t hey might be manifested in t he goo d city . Finally, t hey provide a kind of forma l DNA, a template repeatedly expressed, mod ified and reprodu ced bot h on paper and on th e ground . Sometimes a diagram is meant to be taken quite literally. Such is th e case wit h th e Radiant City (p . 8), Le Corbusier's seminal 1935 statement of mod ernist, "towers in t he park" urbanism. Like Ebenezer Howard's Garden Cit ies t hree decades before it, t he Radiant City sought to address th e congest ion, po llut ion and disease of th e 19th -century industr ial city, "inspired by th e prospect:' as planning historian Robert Fishman put it. " t hat a radical reconstr uctio n of th e cit ies would solve not only the urban crisis, but th e social crisis as well." For Le Corbusier, t his meant eradicat ing t he dark, tub ercular alleys of th e old city and replac ing the m with wide ly spaced ranks of crucifo rm towers , ringed with expressways and sorted into separate secto rs for commercial, industr ial and residenti al uses. Althoug h one can read the Radiant City as a diagrammatic manifesto of planning princip les, it was also a literal architectu ral proposa l, one that was taken up and applied who lesale in a staggeri ng numb er of locati ons from th e suburbs of Paris to t he center of Chicago. Built expressions of th is vision are virtually indistinguishable from t he utopian scheme, except for th e disastr ous outco mes of some. The simp licity of t he design (t he basis of it s appea l and aesthetic elegance) is a lot like a diagram, and quite unlike a city .

NO VEMBER 2012

GRAND RED UCT ION S

Other Ways of Looking Some t yp es of graphics suggest part icular ways of looking at a city, and thus lend t hemselves to part icular sorts of insights. For examp le. in 1909 Patri ck Geddes used a "tra nsect," borrowi ng th e visual language of a cross sect ion fr om architect ure (an imagin ary slice t hrough space. view ed from th e side) and deployin g it as an analyti cal tool at a much larger scale borrowed from ecologica l science. The diagram perf ect ly suited Geddes's pur pose, revealing the way condit ions and contexts change across th e landscape. Thus, as a way of representing and looking at space, it makes t he case for context sensit ivit y, for a broad consider ation of a site's urban, regional and ecological sit uat ion. Similarly, t he figure-groun d or Noili plan (p.16), named for Giambattista Nolli's masterful 1748 map of Rome. excels at revealing th e way in w hich build ings define st reets and ope n spaces, creating a legible pattern . In t he 1960 s, crit ics of the mod erni st app roach to city for m used t he graphical conventio ns of th e Nolli plan to demo nstr ate t he value of spatial definit ion and t raditi onal urb an patt erns.

Quantitative Diagrams Alt houg h cit y planners and urb an po licy makers use data and lang uage to assert th eir argu ments, often it is a single image th at sticks in t he public imaginati on. Diagrams can be encapsulat ions of numerical data, like Michael Mann's "hockey stick gra ph" of average temperatur es over t ime, w hose shocking cry sta llization of th e effect s of global climate change helped put climate impac ts at t he core of planning discourse.

Practical Diagrams Several of th e diagrams presented here are simply planning too ls, designed for clarity , not inspiration. They neverth eless have a complex relationship to a specific set of values and assump t ions. The urban g rid, in use since ancient Greece, has proved t he default geometr y wherever quick and efficient urban developm ent has been needed . most famou sly in not oriously imp atient Manhatt an. The 1785 federal township and sect ion grid was also basically mechanical but revealing of underlying concerns. The rural grid served to norm alize th e set tlement (or conquest) of t he American West but embod ied Jeff ersonian ideals about small landowning farm ers as th e backbone of th e demo cratic ideal. After t he West had been parceled out , Frank Lloyd Wright would take up t he rural gr id as th e basis of his Broadac re City, a utopian ant i-met ropo lis fir st 6

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presented in 1932,which spread the popul ation across th e American interior on one-acre house lot s. In th e case of the set back di agram of New York's 191 6 Zoning Resolut ion, th e purpose was to illust rate a new regulator y code. This diagram sketched an ambit ious new governmental power - t he regulati on of not only land use but buil t form as well. But it s most profo und innovation was accidental: th e deeply evocat ive pro file of skyscraper New York at its midcent ury apex.

Anti-Plans Some diagrams are abo ut resistance. In t he early 1960 s, t he Oakland Tribune published a diagr am t hat tr aced and great ly simplified an Army Corps of Enginee rs map projecti ng t he fu tur e extent of fill in San Francisco Bay if histor ic rates of infill cont inued. The image (show n on pag e 3), which showed only a piti ful channel remaining in t he center of the bay, was capt ioned " Bay or River?" A perfect expression of th e power of diagr ams, it became th e rallying cry of a movement led by Save t he Bay that ushered in powerf ul new environmental pro tecti ons. In th e 1950s, a group of radical scholars, art ists and architec ts in Europe that called t hemselves th e Sit uatio nist International grew increasingly alarmed at th e rati onalist urb an renewal schemes of mod ernist architect s. The city, th ey argued, was consti tuted from t he bott om up by the exper iences of individuals. They cult ivated resistance to th e soullessness of th e modern cit y throug h play, serendipity and aimless but op en wandering . They coined th e term "psychog eography" to describe this personal encounter w it h urban space, illustrated by evocat ive maps of th e pro cess. This crit ique of top -d own planning wo uld be t aken up by resistance movements around th e wor ld - led by Jane Jacobs and ot hers - who t urned back fr eeways and bu lld ozers and dared to qu esti on th e authority of t he experts. It wo uld also lay th e found ati on for a new cult ure, now in f ull flower, of omnivorous delight at th e experience of city life.

Planning Ahead A crit ical examinatio n of th e assumpt ions and narrati ves of planning as a discipl ine is an essential aspect of responsib le pract ice and informed cit izenship. It reveals somet hing of th e fascinatin g histo ric relat ionship betw een values, ideologies and planning practi ce. med iated in thi s case by visualizat ion. But , more imp ortant , it calls us to examine our own assumpt ions and ideals abo ut cit ies and t he ways in which we shape, imagine and repr esent th em. THE URBANIST

OJ Garden Cities In 1902, Ebenezer Howard, an unassuming ste nog rapher and amateur inventor, published one of th e most influential visions in the histor y of city planning, called Garden Cities of To-morrow. In it, Howard created a series of diagrams th at helped to establi sh t he orthodoxy of 20t h-cent ury city planning. The crisis behind what Howard called t he "Garden City idea" - t he pollu tion and overcrowdin g of th e industr ial city - is encapsulated in one diagram's tit le: "A Group of Smo keless, Siumiess Cities." Howard proposed decentra lizing industr ial cities by construct ing a regionally coo rdinated series of smaller Garden Cit ies in the count ryside. Linked by railroads and canals and separated by a per manent greenbelt. the Garden Cities would offe r t he best of both town and country life to their 32,000 residents, including emp loyme nt in factories and work shops, affo rdab le rent s and abundant open space. The Garden City was predic ated on a quietly radi cal prog ram of economic reform , in which coopera tive associations wo uld own the land and lease it to tenant s, reinvestin g th e proceeds in public impr ovement s. It is hard not to read Howard's com pelli ng circu lar diagrams as plans, tho ugh t hey pointedly claim not to be. The Garde n Cities seemed to emerge as full y form ed (and quaintl y nam ed) sate llites, t heir utopian English landscape awash in prog ressive social institu ti ons (like "ho mes fo r waifs") and pr odu cti ve rur al ente rprises. Nearly a centur y later, th e graph ic treatment of circular pearls on a st ring of tr ansit infra str uct ure wou ld be picked up by planners advocat ing tr ansit-oriented developm ent. Alt hough Howar d and his foll owers init iated t wo Garden Cities, Letchworth and Wellw yn, the industrial and collec t ivist aspects of th e effo rt languished. But t he spat ial concept of compre hensively planned decent ralizati on thro ugh th e establis hment of new towns of a more humanizing scale and character was profoundly influent ial, and Howar d's diag rams are widely admired to thi s day. In th e 1920s, Howard's idea fo und an enth usiastic reception in th e Regional Planning Association of Ame rica, whi ch was looking for ways to add ress congestio n in th e New York area. RPA leaders includin g Lewis Mumford , Clarence Stein and Clarence Perry, adopted t he idea of

FIGURE 4

Above: One of a series of diagrams by Ebenezer Howard, "A Group of Smokeless, Slum less Cities" encapsulated thepollution andovercrowding of theearly20thcentury industrial city. FIGURE 5

Right: The American Garden City:Clarence Perry's "neighborhood unit" (1929) reshaped Howard's vision for theprivatecar.

decentr alization t hrough planned communit ies in perman ent greenbelts.

TH E URBANI ST

NOVEMBER 2012

GRAND REDUCT IONS

Satellite cities. e.g.: go vernment buildings or center for M)CiaJstudies, e tc.

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Modernist architects, most famously in t he person of Charles- Edo uard Jeanneret (k now n as Le Corbu sier), offered quite a different appr oach to th e congest ion, disease and pollutio n of t he ind ustr ial city . As revered fo r his masterf ully poetic building s as he is reviled fo r his grand iose urb an planning schemes, Le Corbu sier remains a polarizing t itan of the 20 t h cent ury. Beginning in th e 1920s, Le Corbu sier develop ed a series of rati onalist ideal cities, which he claimed woul d solve urban probl ems through th e applic atio n of scientific method s by pow erful cadres of expert s. Workin g with ClA M (In French, "I nternationa l Congress of Modern Architec t ure"), he created the At hens Chart er, a manifesto for th e mod ern city. Le Corbusier's vision of t he "Radiant City " (also referr ed to as "Towers in th e Park") set large slab towers far apart to prov ide resident s wit h equal access to light, air and ope n space. The gr een space in bet ween wo uld be available to all, even passing below buildings th at were raised on st ilt- like pi/otis.

Where th e traditional cit y ran on messy mixture , t he Radiant City sought order thr ough separat ion. Large, pedest rian-o nly superb locks wo uld be surrounded by expr essways wi th inte rchanges that eliminated crossings and intersect ions. Land uses would also be radically compa rt menta lized, wit h separate sectors

FIGURE 6

Top: le Corbusier's "Radiant Cities" (1935) were built around largetowers setfar apart to provide residents with equal access to light, air andopen space. FIGURE 7

left: In1947, the Radiant Citycomes to San Francisco's Western Addition . Throughout theU.S.,le Corbusier's ideas provided thedesign template for "slumclearance," urban renewal andmuch of publichousing.

NOVEMBER 20 12

T HE URBA NI ST

THEORETICAL T OWNSHIP D IAGRAM SHOWI NG

METHOD OF NUMl3ERI NG SECTIONS WITH A D ,JOI N I N G SEC T IONS

devoted to housing , offices, industry and government. The Radiant City and th e modernist vision it encapsulated had a powerfu l impac t on t he planning and building of citi es in th e 20t h cent ury. Its promise of light, air and open space direct ly addressed t he prevailing concerns about crowded urban slums, and its separatio n and rat ionalizat ion of both land use and t raffic pro mised to protect people from t he t hreats of po llution and aut omobiles. It became the predominant template for pub lic housing and for urb-an reconstruction schemes in general, includ ing American "slum clearance" effo rts under federal urban renewal programs. Public housing projects across t he country opened wit h great fanfar e, only to succumb to a grim cockta il of econom ic isolati on, under invest ment and th e intrinsic shortcomings of their physical design. Parks became parking lot s or grim no-man's-lands. Basic serv ices were unavailable, and th e st igma of being isolated in a separate world compo unded st ructural shifts away from manufact uring th at marooned tho usands of wo rking-class families in concentrated enclaves. In 1972, just 18 years after th eir completion, for examp le, the Pruit t- Igoe project s in St. Louis were dynamit ed, becoming a symbo l of th e failur es of mod ernist urbanism.

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THE URBAN IST

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grid, latershaping settlement patterns.

Rural Grid

With th e 1785 Land Ordina nce, Congress created the Public Land Survey System, in which t hree-qua rters of U.S. land area wo uld ultim ately be surveyed, sold and sett led. Beginning west of th e Ohio River, th e system laid a grid of 6-mile-square townships across the count ry's midsect ion, ignor ing th e natura l geography. Each township was composed of 36 one-mile-square sections. It was one of t he most influent ial acts of spatia l planning in human history. The Land Ordinance solved several pressing issues for the young repub lic. First, it provi ded a fund raising mechanism for t he federal government, which had limited powers of t axation and deep Revolut ionary War debt. Second, it s simplicity facilitated rapid and orderly set t lement of newly conquered territory minim izing conflict over land claims. And th ird, it helped realize the aspiration of its sponsor, Thomas Jefferso n, that the United States should be a nat ion of small landow ning farm ers.

The towns hip diagram, repeated tho usands of times , estab lished a pattern (what geog raphers call th e "cadaster") th at wo uld shape every t hing th at follow ed. Farmhouses stoo d in th eir sq uare fields, so villages rarely formed. State and county bor ders were ruler-str aight. Roads were placed along parcel boundaries. and urban development occurred in sect ional increments. prod ucing the characte ristic one-mile grid of arte rial st reets seen tod ay in cit ies like Phoenix, Chicago and Las Vegas. In t he early 1930s, Frank Lloyd Wright bega n work on a utopian scheme called Broadacre City, which was unique in that it was inspired by and built on th e dimensions of th e township and sectio n grid. By grant ing each family one-acre and dispersing th em across th e American interio r, th e idea was that cities would disappea r, to be rep laced by a hybrid of Jeffersonian yeomanry and Corbusian social engineering.

NOVEMBER 2012

GR AND RED UCT IONS

The Street Grid

"The heritage of the gridiron p lans goes back at least to the Roman camps. The basis for the grid as an endur ing and appea ling urban form rests on fi ve main characteristics: order and regulatory, orientation in space and to elements, simp licity and ease of navigation, speed of layout, and adaptability to circumstance. rr

-Patrick Geddes

The gridiron plan has been used to lay out cities since architect, urb an planner and mathematician Hippodamus planned the Greek colo ny of Miletu s around 450 BC It wo uld reappear t hroughout urban history whenever cities needed to be built quickly and cou ld be planned in advance . It would recur in China's ancient imperial capita ls, in t he military encamp ments of Rom an legions and in the medieval bastides fr om w hich Europeans launched th eir crusades. But it s heyday was the Age of Reason, fr om the late 16th to the early 19t h centur ies, when rational philosophy, imperial conquest and exp losive economic expansion made the grid the defau lt ur ban pattern in many sett ings. The grid embo dies a rati onal, Cartesian concept ion of space, but it s chief 10 NO VEMBER 2012

virtues are its simp licity , scalability and pragmatism. It is easily surveyed and subdiv ided into regular parcels th at are easily built out. It is also modular, so new distri ct s can be added increment ally as a city grows. The form reached its apotheos is in the 1811 Commissioner's Plan for New York City, which sought to regu larize the development of Manhattan (and its hodgepodge of colliding grids) north of Houston St reet. The relentl ess app licat ion of t he grid is especially not able for what is omitte d: th e diag onal of Broadway, which predate d th e plan and wo uld resist its erasure; t he island's natura l topog raphy of hills and rocky outcrops, wh ich wo uld be partially blasted away but survive in places; and of course Cent ral Park, which wo uld be created later, prov iding a curvaceo us Romantic counterpo int to t he grid and a real esta te bonanza for adjacent prop erti es. But th e grid had its dr awb acks, and 19th -centur y skeptics of it s relent less rati onality began idealizing the winding streets of the past and injecting curves wherever they could . By the 1950s, huge tracts of sub urba n cui-de-sacs were being laid out, and th e vir t ues of th e grid were forgo tte n.

FIGURE 10

Above: The 1811 Commissioner's Plan lor Manhattan sought to regulate whatsome leltto bearelentless application 01 thegrid in thecity.

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Right: San Francisco's streetgrids ignored thecity's hills, wetlands, and coastline, all of which areall visiblein this 1852 map.

FIGURES 12 AND 13

The anc ient Roma n castrum, (at lefl) a griddedmilitary encampment, became thebasis for theplans of latersettlements including Florence, Italy (below).

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[[] The Megaregion Thin kin g abo ut urban regions has mostl y focused on th e idea of a cente r city and its perip hery, wh ether an agr icultural hinterland or a ring of bedroom communities . Indeed, th e idea t hat importa nt challenges could - and should - be add ressed at the region al scale (t he nine-count y Bay Area, for example) had by th e early 20t h cent ury become a majo r st ream of planning thought. In the 1960s, however, sociologist Jean Got t mann describ ed "a new order in th e organizat ion of inhabited space," emerging at a scale well beyond convent ional definit ions of t he regi on. His 1961 book , Megalop olis, described an urban agglomerat ion compr ising Bosto n, New York, Philadelph ia, Balt imore and Washington, D.C. th at exhibited considerab le economic, geo graphical and cult ural inte gration. The idea proved prescient, as th e megalopol is (also known as the "mega regio n" or " megapolitan region") has become an increasingly distin ct and pervasive phenom enon of th e glob al age. Megaregions are loosely integ rated urban clusters of 10 milli on peop le or more, wit h an ind istin ct physical form, cont aining a wide range of land use and demographic conditi ons and a comp lex set of internal economic relationships. No singl e metri c can defin e a megaregion, but its logic might be revealed in a series of commo nalit ies: overlappi ng job and housing markets, key industr ies in common, integrated t ransportation systems, ecol ogical context and cult ural out look. This new unit brin gs wit h it a

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new imp erati ve: instituti onal and poli cy framework s wit h a megaregional perspective . SPUR's 2007 report, The Nort hern Califo rnia Megaregion, describes an area with a core extending out f rom San Francisco, taking in Sacramento, Mod esto, Mont erey and Lake Tahoe, and whose sphere of influence inclu des both Fresno and Reno. It uses a variet y of metrics and pro poses

100

_ _ _ _ _ _ _---=s:.:e~ v e ra l pol icy init iat ives to t ackle challeng es at a megaregional scale. FIGURE 14

Top: Jean Gollman's seminal bookMega-

lopolis(1961) argued that the northeastern U.S. could bestbeunderstood asa single, complexly integrated urban megaregion. FIGURE 15

left: In 2009,the Regional Plan Association (RPA) mapped 10"megaregions" in the United States, where mostof thegrowthin thecoming decades is expected to occur.

NOVEMBER 2012

T HE URBAN IST

MINER

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The Transect

A transect diagram combines th e visual language

of th e architec tural cross section wit h a scale and analyt ical approac h borrowed from t he science of ecology. It reveals how cond itions change across a landscape, suggest ing th e importance of contex t to bot h natu ral and built communities. The technique was deployed more th an 20 0 years ago by Prussian geog rapher Alexander von Humboldt , who used a tr ansect to diagram th e biogeography (t he study of the distributi on of species, organisms and ecosyste ms in geog raphic space and t hrough geologic al t ime) of Patag onia from ocean to ocean. In 190 9, th e Scot t ish planner and sociologist

THE URBANIST

Patri ck Gedd es drew his influent ial "Valley Sect ion" a t ransect t hat showe d how ways of life, or "n at ural occupat ions," emerged from th eir geographical context. His emphasis on ext ract ive industr ies like hunting and mining notw it hstanding, his way of thin king had a profound influence on th e regionalism and environmenta l consciousness t hat became a powerful force in 20 t h-cent ury planning. Landscape architect Ian McHarg would also deploy th e tr ansect as an analytica l tool in his influentia l 1969 book Design with Nature, which estab lished the framework for to day's ub iquitous use of geo graphical information syste ms (GIS).

FIGURE 16

Top: Patrick Geddes'1909 Valley Section demonstrated howways of life or " natural occupations " such asmineror hunter, emerged from their geographical context. FIGURE 17

In1999, Andres Duany created the "urban to ruraltransect," which identifieda series of conditions from theurban core to wild nature, andproposed that planning policies change asdensities varied.

NOVEMBER 2012

14 NOV EMBER 2012

THE URBANI ST

GRAND REDUCTIONS

FIGURE 18

Left:Hugh Ferris's renderings fromThe Metropolis of Tomorrow (1922) tested the implications of the1916 zoning law,butalso defined a new urban aesthetic. FIGURE 19

Right: In thisaerial viewof New York City. the impact of theresolution onbuilt formis clearly visiblebythe1930s.

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Sculpting Form

Many of the tools of city planning were created in ord er to regulate t he excesses of th e 19th -centu ry indu stri al city, includ ing unregul ated developm ent , overcrowd ed tenements and noxious indu stri al uses. Like many early planning codes, New York City 's 1916 Zoning Resolution esta blished Euclidean zoning t hat regu lated land use, defin ing residentia l. comme rcial and indust rial zones. But unlike many such laws, it also regul ated the "b uilding envelope," or the allowa ble volume t hat a st ruct ure could occupy. This was in response to previously unregulated stee l skyscrapers like th e 1914 Equitab le Building, which ange red its neighbors by bloc king light, air and views. The zoning was part of a broade r Progressive Era plannin g agenda th at included tenement reform and building fir e and safet y codes. The new law allowe d a "st reet wall" propor tio nal to t he widt h of t he adjoining st reet, above which a building wou ld need to step back and fit wit hin a "sky expo sure plane" that wo uld allow at least some light to reach st reet level. This subt ract ive approach to urb an design was well suited to th e inte nse growth pressures of early-20t h-ce nt ury Manhat tan. In 1922. an architec t ural dr aft sman named Hugh Ferriss set out to illustrate th e impli cations of th e new law. His moody charcoal renderings were eerily predict ive of the Manhattan th at wo uld emerge in t he subsequent decades, a machin e-age metrop olis that would pop ulate count less com ic books and films. The approach to regulating built form would become part of t he toolkit of city planning. San Francisco's 1985 Downtown Plan included both towe r set back and height limits (later superseded by Propo sit ion K shadow reg ulat ions) to ensure tha t t he sun reached ope n spaces. TH E URBA N IST

SETBAC K P R INC I PLE Typical example in a I U! t unes dIstrict, for

streets 50't()100'WIde

Th e set bac K Ii ne alway s runs up from the ce nt er of the st reet through the limiting height at the st reet line

FIGURE 20

Right: The 1916 Zoning Resolution setback principle regulated landuse anddefined commercial, residential andindustrial zones with New York City.

NOVEMB ER 2 012

GRAND REDU CTIONS

The Nolli Map

Giambattista Nolli's 1748 map of Rome was a major milestone in cartography. It presented the ent ire city to scale in plan (or "ichnog raphic") view - wit h every point seen as if from dir ectl y above. At the tim e, most ur ban views were imagined bird's-eye aerial perspect ives th at were not technically rigo rous. The Nolli map's imp act on urban design and planning stems f rom its graphical convent ion: In f igure ground diagra ms, building s are show n as dark masses, wit h streets and open space left white. The effect - now a common analyt ical techniq ue is to reveal t he characteristic pat tern of st reets and build ings t hat underlies urban form.

16 NOVEMBER 2012

The fi gur e-gr ound or form -void relation ships th at th ese diag rams illustrate proved to be hotl y contested in th e 20th cent ury. In tr aditi onal urb an patterns like Nolli's Rome, st reets and open spaces generally read as t he for egr ound, defined and shaped like urb an roo ms by background buildings. Modern architec ts inverted th is relation ship, wit h buildings as foreground object s, set in background space, which tended to be po orly def ined. Begin ning in th e 1970s, urban designers like Colin Rowe turned to fig ure-ground maps to illustr ate t he qualit ies that were being lost, and to make t he case for t raditiona l patte rns.

FIGURE 21

Giambatlisti Nolli's1748 mapof Rome (Nuova Pianta Di Roma) presented theentirecity to scale, with every point seen asif fromdirectlyabove.

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W The Bottom-Up City In the 19505, t he Situationist Internationa l, a gro up of radical scholars, artists and architects in Europe, had grown increasingly alarmed at th e rationalist urban renewal schemes of modernist architects. Ancient quartiers were being demolished and replaced wi th clean, orde red institutional buildin gs. Though the Sit uationists sympathized with the radical social agenda espoused by modernism, they felt that th e soulful part icularities of the cit ies th ey loved and the bohemian demimond es t hey occupied were thr eatened by the cold absolutism of mod ernism. They set out to confound and resist not only the excessesof bourgeois capitalism but also the tyranny of modernism's urban form agenda, however progressive its mot ives. The Situationists urged a different sort of resist ance, one that happ ened through play,

18 NOVEMBER 2012

serendipity and of being deeply att uned to the experiential qualities of th e city. They coined the term "psychogeog raphy" to get at th e way in which the city was created not by architects and planners but rathe r by the sum of indiv idual exper ience and meaning . For them, to encounter the city was to create the city . Guy Debord's "Guide psychoqeoqraphlque de Paris" diagrammed one particu lar set of wanderings through th e city, its rout e snipped from a favorite illustrati ve map. The idea that th e city was constituted through the experiences of its residents also emerged in planning pract ice as an analytica l strain of urban design, one that sought new ways to understand the nuances of cit y life. Kevin Lynch from the Massachusett s Institu te of Technology develo ped a system of "cognitive mappin g" in which subjects

FIGURE 23

Above: Theorist Guy Debord's 1957 Guide Psycl1ogeographique deParis records one observer's "drift" though theatmospheres andemotions of Paris.

FIGURE 25

In "Infinite City: A San Francisco Atlas," (2010) writer Rebecca Solnit created unique portraitsof San Francisco fromscores of thematic (and imaginary) maps likethisone, "Monarchs andQueens."

THE URBAN IST

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FIGURE 24

Above right: The"city image"of Boston was compiled andcreated by Kevin Lynch fromtheinput of many individuals in "The Image of theCity" (1961).

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mapp ed th e city fr om memory. The result s from a sizable sample could be aggregated, revealing a city's most memor abl e or "imageable" featur es. This newfou nd emphasis on t he experience and memor y of urban resident s was part of a major reorientation of city planning away fr om topdown tra nsformat ion and toward a mor e conte xtual, citizen-based appro ach. The Situat ionist emphasis on experiment. play and happenstance has foun d a new voice in th e 21stcent ury public realm. Often described as " tact ical urbani sm," urban interventions like PARK(ing ) Day, Crit ical Mass. Sunday St reets and Burning Man have blurred th e lines between art, play and act ivism, each taking t he city and its possibilit ies as it s subject and each assert ing the value of the ephemeral and t he experime nta l in today's civic discourse.

T HE URBANIST

NOVE MBER 2012

GRAND RED UCTIO NS

FIGURE 26 Michael Mann's seminal (and controversia l)

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2000

The Hockey Stick

Whil e most of th e diagrams featured here were created by planners and architec ts, few have had as much imp act on th e pr acti ce and rati onale of planning as Michael Mann's " hoc key st ick," which com bines several sources of pro xy data (like ice cores and tree rings) with recent records to show a dramatic spike in Northern Hemisphere temperatures in the indu strial era. Nicknamed for its shape, thi s graph was famously featur ed in AI Gore's An Inconvenient.Truth, and altho ugh it has come under scrut iny by climate skeptics, its scientific validity has been repeatedly confi rmed . The specte r of global climate change and t he role human set t lements play in it has becom e a centra l organizing idea in planning and architecture. Simply put , peop le who live in cit ies consume less energy and emit less carbon per cap ita than their suburba n counte rparts. The fund ament al effi ciencies of . cit ies - walkability, tran sit access, smaller hom es, fewe r cars and more eff icient infra stru ctur e - make them a critica l tool fo r lessening our climate impact. The shape and location of growth th us become critica l factors in our climate future. Denser grow t h,

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well int egrated with tr ansit and ot her amenities, helps reduce our climate footprint, and dispersed, uncoordinated grow t h wo rsens it. Many othe r factors - like public healt h, civic life , open space preserva tion and more equitab le access to basic amenit ies (like parks and tr ansit) - also benefit from thi s kind of "smart growth," and planners ofte n link the climate argume nt to ot her prioriti es. This argume nt is reflected in po licies like California's Senate Bill 375, passed in 2009, which atte mp ts to improve th e integra t ion of tr ansportation and land use decisions by t ying tr ansportati on doll ars to more sustai nable growth patterns. It is in th e process of being imp lemented and its impact remains

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Area growthisoccurring in car-dependent suburban areas at theregion's edges.

NOVEMBER 20 12

TH E URBANIST

INT RO DUCTI O NS

New Faces at SPUR

Pier Davis Pier grad uated from th e Universit y of Vermont with a degr ee in environmenta l st udies and comm unity and internati onal development. One of SPUR's publ ic programming interns, Pier is most excited abo ut streetscape tra nsforma tio n. bike/pedestria n planning and food systems . She keeps busy outside of SPUR by applying to grad schoo l and rock climbing .

Sarah Dominguez Sarah is SPUR's food syste ms and urban agricult ure program int ern . She is current ly study ing fo r a master's in urb an planning at USC with a focus on susta inab le land use but is in t he Bay Area for her fe llowship wit h t he U.S. Environmental Prot ecti on Age ncy.

Atreyee Ghosh A graduate of Columbia Universit y's Crit ical, Concept ual and Curato rial Practices in Architec t ure pro gram, Atr eyee is SPUR's edito rial intern . Her prim ary int erest lies in architec t ure and design publ icati ons. Wh en she's not photog raph ing her latest explora t ions in t he Bay Area, At reyee is an avid crafter and blog ger.

Shannon Fiala Shannon is t he assist ant project manag er for th e Ocean Beach Master Plan. She has worked in environmenta l p lanning in th e Bay Area for ov er nine years for organ izations like the Marin Mun ic ipa l W at er Dist ri ct and th e Napa County Resource Con servati on District. Shannon rec eived ma st er's d egree s in ci t y p la nni ng an d lan d scap e arc hitecture and env ir o nm enta l p lann ing from UC Berkel ey and a BS in ecology f ro m th e Univer sity of Michig an .

Salma Mousallem Salma is a recent grad uate of t he Maste r of City Planning program at th e Universit y of Califo rnia, Berkeley, w here she focused on housing, community and economic developm ent. She has been working with SPUR on th e Proposit ion C campaig n and is int erested in learning as much as possible abo ut models of affo rdable housing in th e Unit ed Sta tes.

Mary Sek Mary is SPUR's GIS Intern and a fourth year architectur e st udent at California College of the Arts. She is an act ive member of NOMAS (Nat ional Organization of Minorit ies in Arc hitec t ure) and the AlAS (A merican Inst it ute of A rchitec tu re St udents). Born and raised in Sonoma, she has a love for t he enviro nment and being in th e outdoo rs.

GeneStroman Front desk ambassador Gene Stroman received his bachelor's deg ree in urban and regiona l studies from Virginia Commonwea lth University and is interested in pursuing a career in urban planning. When not wo rking at SPUR he's a bicyclist, musician and ded icated coffee snob. THE URBAN IST

NOVE MBER

URBAN FIE LD NOT ES

Case Study #53:

The Sidewalk Economy Regu lated, inf o rm al, sometimes illicit, sid ew alk businesses and vendors bring vitality and life to urban citie s, especia lly at the pedestrian scale. Caseworker: Sergio Ruiz Plann ers generally vi ew sidewalks as a way for people, or pedest rians, to get around from one place to anot her but sidewalks also provide a vita l econom ic funct ion. Not only is there stro ng evide nce t hat walkab le neigh bor hoods increase property values and bring mor e custo mer t raff ic to commerc ial d istr icts , but in fact, much economy activi ty occurs on public sidewa lks. Throughout th e Bay Area, it 's not hard to find examples of th e sidewa lk economy, especially w ith th e recent surge of food tru cks and pop-up businesses t hrou ghout th e cit y.

NOVEMBER 20 12

Flowe r Cart Flower vendors have been part of San Francisco for generat ions and are regulated by t he city to ope rate on publi c sidewalks. Flower stands, like t his one in the financial distr ict, are a feast for the eyes--and th e nose.

III Side walk Cafe This cafe in dow ntow n Oakland makes use of th e sidewalk so people can enjoy th e weat her and watch passersby.

THE URBAN IST

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Street musicians are all over San Francisco, from subway st at ions to commercial districts. They come f rom a var iety of economic background s to share th eir sounds wit h peop le walking by. This st ring duo at Geary and Powell had to compete with percussive rhythms coming from th e opposite corner.

Tables like t his one displaying kit schy apparel and souvenirs are common in touri st distri ct s like Union Square or Market St reet. This vendo r, selling beanies th at resemble Angr y Birds, takes advant age of t he light foot traffic to read his newspaper.

mProduceMarkets Stock to n Street in San Francisco's Chinatown is lined wit h produ ce markets spilling out from the storef ronts, serving th e local community . Stac ks of cardboa rd boxes help buffer th e shoppers from vehicular tr affic.

THE URBANIST

Scarves A vendor on Folsom and 24'h

Street in th e Mission makes use of st reet tr ees to d isplay color f ul scarves.

Sergio Ruiz isa transportation planner for the California Department of Transportation andisSPUR's photography intern.

NO V EMBER 2012

Honoring :

Edward A. Chow, M.D. Mildred Howard Rabbi Stephen S. Pearce, Ph.D. John K. Stewart

Thank you to our generous sponsors EVE NT CHA IR

SPIRE SPO NSORS S AV AREA SHAR I NG ECO N O M Y COALI TIO N

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Richard C. Blum

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CITY NEWS FROM AROUND TH E GLOBE

Urban Drift APOPS@MAS

Informal Vertical Communities

Midt own Manhattan is full of publ ic spaces. Nearly every plaza you see in fr ont of a towering office building? Public space. Jerold Kayden, a professor of urban planning at Harvard, discovered th at 41percent of all corpo rate plazas were of "marginal use" and now, thanks to Adv ocates for Privately Owned Pub lic Spaces at t he Municipal Arts Society (w hich has one heck of an acrony m: APOPS@MAS), we can see exact ly w here th e city 's 500+ privately ow ned public spaces are. On th eir new website, an interactive map tags papas by amenit y. Each has its ow n page, complete wit h ratings, and info on everyt hing from seati ng and artwork to food and climate cont rol -sort of like Yelp for corpora te plazas. "A Matchm aker l or

There is in the middle of Caracas, Venezuela, the Torre David, a 45-sto ry building t hat was abandoned befor e it was finished. In an example of spont aneous urban reuse, th e st ruct ure has been invaded and t aken over by th e more t han 3,0 0 0 peop le who now live t here - and wh o, some sugg est, display mor e invent iveness t han most architects. For t heir exhibit for t he Venice Archit ectur e Biennale, architect s of Urban Think Tank and photographer Iwan Bann researched t he deserted Torre David office building over th e course of a year. It would be easy to idealize w hat is st ill an instant slum but Urban Think Tank and Bann instead see in t hese infor mal sett lements a pot enti al for innovat ion and experimentat ion, with th e goa l of putting design in service to a more equitable and sustai nable futu re.

At t he San Francisco Urban Prot otyping festival in Oct ober, visito rs experienced a living laboratory at Fift h & Mission St reets th at featu red everyt hing from a fruit fence to a sound installation,from an LED-lit hopscotch to a garden planter-slash-ur inal. "So many peopl e have id eas for civic part icipation, but th ere's nowh ere for t hem to take t heir ideas," said Alex Michel, dire cto r of th e 5M Project , which hosted th e festiv al. " This is like a pinball machine. Ideas are bouncing all around here."

"Caracas's Torre David at the Venice Biennial," by

"SFUrban Prototyping FestivalOpens," by Erin

Aaron Betsy. Architect. Aug ust 29. 2012

Allday. sl g ale .com. October 20. 2012

NOVEMBER 2012

Contaminated by Nature

Super Park!

We design our cit ies to be orderly, geometric and predictab le. But what if we allowed th em, instead, to be "co ntaminated" by nature? Asemic For est (image below) by architect Shahira Hammad envisions a new t rain stati on for Vienna, Austria, t hat wo uld do just t hat. Equal part s biomimicry and Alien, Hammad's "modified" Westb ahnhof Train Stat ion takes it s cues fr om spontaneous order, th e spontaneous emergence of ord er out of seeming chaos which occurs in physical, biolog ical and social netw orks. "Yes, it is excessive," she acknowledges. "But essentially it tr ies nothing else but to br ing th e complexities present in nature into t he urban fabri c."

Superkilen is a new urban park

th at cuts thr ough th e heart of Copenhagen's diverse Nerr ebro neighbor hood, home to mo re than 60 natio nalit ies. The kilometerlong "super park" consists of thr ee t hemed part s - " Red Square," "Black Market," and "Green Park" and is dotted wit h art ifact s and cultural mementos "sourced" from th e home countries of th e area's inhabit ants - every thing fr om manhole covers fro m Paris to Islamic tiled fount ains from Morocco. Designed in collaborat ion with art group Superf lex and Topot ek 1 architects, Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG) saw th e park as a " fusion of architect ure, landscape, and art."

"Train Station Infiltrated by the SpontaneousOrder

"Copenhagen's Super Park PromotesDiversity

of Nature," weburbanist.com, 9/ 10/12

and Fun!" architizer.co m, 10/ 22/12

New York's Privately Owned Public Spaces,"by Henry Grabar, TheAtianticCities.com, October 2012

Parklets 2.0

THE URBAN IST

MEMB ER PROF ILE

NE W MEMBERS

Engineering Resilience

New Business Members Buro HappoldConsulting Engineers,Inc. Chinese CommunityHealthCare Association Cityof Fremont Impark Novogradac & Co LLP

New Members

Ayse Hortacsu How th e un settlin g expe rie nce o f an ea rt hq uake in spired a vo c ati on.

In 1999, Ayse Hort acsu was a junior wit hout a major at Stanfo rd University when a large eart hquake hit near her hometown in Turkey. She accompanied a pair of structural engineers from th e Bay Area on th eir reconnaissance mission for a week and saw th e devastation fir sth and. It was a week th at determin ed not only her major (civil engineering)

Tell usabout the work you do at the Applied Technology Council. Our go al is technolog y tr ansfer. Whil e some of our proj ect s are highly technical, some are more approachable, such as "Reducing th e Risks of Nonstruct ural Earthqu ake Damage." I recomm end th at everyo ne read it! (available at ww w.fema.gov/ earthq uake-pubiicat ions/fema-e 74- reducing-rtsks-nonstru ctu ra1eart hquake-damage). And you worked with SPUR on its ResilientCity initiative? As a st ruct ural engineer and resident of San Francisco, th e "big one" is always on my mind . At ATC, we recently completed th e Community Act ion Plan for Seismic Safety (CAPSS) project for th e City of San Francisco, which st udied th e impact of four eart hquake scenarios on privately owned build ings in San Francisco. It' s great to know th at th e city is act ively wo rking on imp lementing th e findings of th e project. One of th e recomm endations of th e st udy T HE URBANI ST

but her career. For th e past four years, Hort acsu has been th e research applicat ions manager at th e Applied Technology Council (ATe), a nonpr ofit th at aims to develop and promot e state-of-t he-art, user-fri endly engineering resources and app licatio ns for use in miti gatin g th e effects of natur al and ot her hazards on th e built environment.

is to reach eart hquake resilience. I'm prett y sure my house wi ll st ill be standing aft er an eart hquake, but if th ere is no place to buy milk, will i stay [th ere]? I found thi s to be an intr iguin g point of view _ and turned to the Resilient City initi ative of SPUR to find out more. Once I joined SPUR, I found many ot her t hings to love beyond planning for th e next big earthquake.

As a lover of cities, what's your favorite .. . Urban view: The tennis courts at th e recreation center in Potr ero Hill have t he best views in t he city. From th ere you get a great view of t he east side of San Francisco and downt own, th e Bay Bridge, th e Port of Oakland and even Mount Diablo on a clear day. Building: Crossing th e Golden Gate Bridge toward San Francisco, I love being welcomed by th e glow ing dome

of th e Palace of Fine Arts. Having a thr ee-year-old, I visit th e Explorato rium th ere regularly and enjoy both th e ground s and th e bui lding . Whi le I look for ward to th eir new location on Piers 15 and 17, I will surely miss th e Explorato rium at th e Palace of Fine Ar ts.

City: My hometown of Ist anbul. It's a city fu ll of history, cult ure, character, great views and delicious fo od! I visit once a year and it' s amazing how much it grows and changes just in th at tim e. The tr affi c gets wo rse, but every t hing I love about th e city remains th e same. Marvel of urban engineering: The Galata Bridge in Istanbul, spanning th e Golden Horn . A bri dge has been in th at location since th e sixth century. It's got every thing - cars, tr ains, pedest rian walkways, restaur ants - and it moves! â&#x20AC;˘

RaviAlimchandani TeresaAlvarado RatnaAmin BobBillingham TaganBlake BrendanCagney JoeCarpenter Carlos Castellanos ShafaqChoudry LeighConnors AnnaDuning DebbieEspino NicoleFarrar Robert Fishkin StephenGardner Brian Haagsman Jeff Hammerquist LauraHammett Paul Haydu DaveHendrickson& Daniel Sonnenfeld StevenKing Deborah Koski TinaLee Alexandral.eumer Charles Lewis AlanLoomis ErinMcAuliff Robert McCarthy MaureenMcGee McKenna-LouiseMcKetty SusieMcKinnon SumitaMukherjee Medley HannahMensing SandraMiller Christina (Izzie) Nixon StephanieOhshita KevinPedronan MikePeterson Kelly Pretzer Charles Ream Bobby Reich-Patri AnnaRoche DaveRonak Abigail Sandberg LauraSasso Jessica Stanley Jennifer ETai Ariel Takata-Vasquez NikTan SachikoTanikawa ThomasTellefsen Anne Turner SydWayman

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Tim e-d ated mat er ial

OSPUR LEGACY SOCIETY

SPUR LEGACY SOCIETY We are grateful to Samuel and Florence Scarlett, and to everyone who remembers SPUR through a bequest, life income plan, or other type of planned gift. Your support strengthens and

Shape the future of San Francisco and the broader Bay Area

ensures the future of SPUR and the Urban Center. Legacy Society members are invited to an exclusive annual gathering and become part of the Urban Leaders Forum - our major donor

SPUR graciously thanks Florence McCormack Scarlett

society - which gathers several times a year

and Samuel Lloyd Scarlett, M.D. whose generous bequest

to hear from noted experts about urbanism .

will provide core support to promote good planning

planning and the future of our region .

and good government through research, education

We hope you'll tell us when you have named the

and advocacy - helping SPUR shape the future of San

SPUR in your will. We would very much like the

Francisco and broader Bay Area. Samuel passed away in

opportunity to thank you for your generosity.

November of 2011 at the age of 96, and was a loyal donor to SPUR during his lifetime.

ENSURING YOUR LEGACY For more information about how to include SPUR

spur.org/legacy

in your estate plans in a way that best fits your

SPURis a S01(c)(3) non-profit organization with tax 10# 94-1498232 . All contributions to SPURare tax-deductible to the full extent of the law.

director at 415-644-4281 or donate@spur.org .

needs today please contact SPUR's development