Localized Tactics | Territorial Impact by Todd Ebeltoft

site f: former ford assembly plant

CONTENTS: 01. 02. 03. 04. 05. 06. 07. 08.

PRODUCTIVE FUTURES \\ ABSTRACT DEBRIEF FOR THE UNPLANNED \\ INTRO Emerging Urbanisms \\ RESEARCH PROPOSITIONS OF TACTIC AND ACCRETION CONDITIONS OF JACKSONVILLE 8 NON-SITES AN ISLAND \\ PROPOSAL CREDITS

site h: exchange club island

site g: former cement factory

site b: vacant lot

site c: former merrilstevens shipyards

site a: under fuller warren bridge

site e: former seaboard airline railways lumber docks

site d: former gibbs shipyards

J U L Y

2 0 1 4

TODD W. EBELTOFT

LOCALIZED TACTICS TERRItORIAL IMPACT ARTICLES OF URBAN CONJECTURE IN JACKSONVILE, FLORIDA

TODD W. EBELTOFT BACHELOR OF SCIENCE IN ARCHITECTURE FLORIDA A&M UNIVERSITY, 2010

A RT IC L E S O F U R B A N C O N J E C T U R E I N JACKSONVILE, FLORIDA

[

A thesis submitted to the Graduate School of the Univers ity of C i nci nna ti in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Ma s t er of A rch itectu re in the School of Arch itecture and Interior D esi gn of th e C ol l ege of D esi gn, A rch itecture, A r t , and P l an n i ng Committee Chair: A ar at i K ane k ar , P h. D.

]

\\ PRODUCTIVE FUTURES TW E B ELT O FT

econd-tier American cities are the new target for urban transformation and in turn require critical responses in architecture and planning. Time has shown that traditional planning instruments have become tools incapable of directing projects for redevelopment - master plans often derail leaving their results incoherent or irrelevant and the quality struggles to be controlled. Contrary to the use of long-term master plans, accretionary responses to the specific qualities and conditions of urban sites have begun to emerge as a means of acting consciously to the demands of the city. Conditions define how and where a response formulates. As a reaction to the conditions surrounding the development of any city: How can tactical development critically enable sites and in turn impact the territorial scale? A thorough understanding of the site’s context - the consequential significances of the environmental, social, political and economic - is key to responding to this question. Acting tactically to the strategies set forth by the municipality while keeping in tune with the complexities of the everyday promotes a contingent and accretionary approach to urban development. It is crucial to recognize conjunctions between public policy and contemporary society in order to achieve environments of flexibility; ones capable of evolving in non-linear directions and allowing for productive futures. This document acts as a summary to an in-depth study of the intersections of public policy and urban design, of the way in which the city has positioned itself and its subsequent spatial manifestations. It targets Jacksonville, Florida, which has recently been referred to as America’s most average city. The city’s historical identity as a ‘port city’ frames the contemporary issues of global society and in turn is considered to be a major contributor to evolving the identity of downtown. Encouraged by recent revitalization efforts and intended as an extension of existing programs in the city, the aim of this thesis is to catalyze transformative change on Jacksonville by identifying and exploiting existing networks that promote social, economic and ecological change. Generative, localized events will highlight current systems and introduce future methods that support development of Jacksonville’s local identities and provoke reactivation of downtown at a variety of scales and magnitudes. This thesis probes at the opportunities in singular and small-scale urban development: localized tactics with a territorial impact.

iii

\\ ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This thesis cannot be complete without recognizing the following supporters:

A. K A N EK A R / / A . BE T SKY / / L. FISCH ER // P. & O. EB EL TOFT

CONTENTS

V AC K NOW L E D G E ME N T S

4 I NT RODUC T ION

DEBRIEF FOR THE U N PL A N N E D

15 R E S E A RC H

P R O P O S ITIO NS TAC T IC A N D ACC R E T ION

iii A B S T R AC T

P R ODUCTI VE F U T U RES

10 R E S E A RC H

OV E RV IE W O F U R B A NIS M

8-9 A VIE W O F FA IL E D P L A NNING FLORIDA SITES

LOCALIZED TACTICS | territorial impact s m a l l s c a l e t r a n s f o r m at i v e c h a n g e i n j a c k s o n v i l l e , f l o r i d a

26 S I T E

DOWNTOWN J A CKSO N V IL LE

44 PROP OS A L

A N IS L A ND PROG R A MMAT IC A RC H I PE L AG O

38 TAC T IC S

8 N O N - SIT E S

22-25 JACKSONVILL E THE IMAGE OF THE CITY

SE L E CT E D R E A D I N G S

IMA GE C R E D ITS

BIBLIOGRAPHY

INTRODUCTION

population density seen as points - UNITED STATES DATA: US CENSUS BUREAU

a debrief FOR THE UNPLANNED

rchitecture and planning have changed drastically in the past decades and now more than ever require acute attention to the issues of urban circumstance, to reflect the layered and fragmented nature of the locale. Rapid social and political changes such as globalization or network societies have rendered traditional methods of planning obsolete. The idea of controlling growth or development of the city based on prediction has become increasingly ineffective simply because future developments, in their volatile state, cannot be accurately predicted. Also, the common understanding of architecture’s scale and scope, as a component of a planned fabric, is no longer sufficient to addressing the needs of people adapting to the rapidly changing social and cultural imbrications of urban life. It is in the case of scale and time that architecture and planning can work effectively towards productive transformation. It is thinking about the responsive singular small-scale over the visionary plan that allows for urban experimentation. Implementing architecture on an as-needed basis sets up sites as test zones for their potential urban production and as a means of responding to the urgencies of the city. In the following pages, this document stresses a focus towards flexible, contingent urban development that highlights an organic output. While defining current conditional urban crises, there is an identification of potential interventions through initiatives and activities that suggest temporal and permanent transformations. Cultural, social and political activities and their networked operational scale inform the ways in which urban development can be collaborative. The proposal, a political and cultural imperative, suggests joint ecological programs and urban interventions to catalyze long-term cultural, social and economic development.

topic identification The research conducted prior to the year spent on this thesis was primarily to get a feel for recent projects that have had a similar developmental effect in other cities. Both second and top tier cities including Hamburg, Porto, Bergen (NO), Rotterdam, Aarhus, Munich, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Miami were visited during this time. This research operates as a foundational methodology and means of operation for continued investigations and informs the development of selected sites along the St John’s River in downtown Jacksonville. Given each case study city has an ongoing relationship with an adjacent port, focus was directed towards the influence of the port to the city and its service to development.

problem definition The future of Jacksonville depends on infrastructure. The underpinnings to any city’s development is the means by which sites are accessible. In many second tier cities, highway infrastructure, industrial zones and lack of public transportation separate certain locations from the urban core, in some cases places with potential for high real estate value due to their geographic location. The introduction of overpasses, connectors and interchanges throughout downtown Jacksonville has severed many ideal locations from becoming extensions of the cultural, social and economic activity currently existing in the Central Business District. Urban decay is the resulting expression for the misuse of these sites and society’s nomadic and negligent attitude. It is here that opportunity for reactivation occurs.

program definition Over the past 15 years, the City of Jacksonville has requested several proposals by architects and planners for future visions for the city. Many concepts focus their attention towards a future image of the city, highlighting aesthetic characteristics similar to Savannah or Charleston, without any attention to the contingent state of development. Through ongoing interaction with the city, looking into the overlaps of public policies/agendas and the state of contemporary society, developing diverse programs on the waterfront offers an incremental, flexible infrastructure to public space. By using multiple visions for the development, a multivalent coherency to the urban environment is achieved while accommodating various functional and conceptual possibilities that emerge over time. Information on the current state and logistics of downtown Jacksonville were provided by the departments of Transportation (DOT), Parks and Recreation, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Planning, among others, which, together with earlier findings have been directive towards predominantly disregarded, and, therefore, often available sites. There is an expectation that these sites would be reintegrated into public life and space considering they are reclaimed with Federal funds, typically by the municipality itself. Their actual state not exposes a means of measure to deliberately excluded or lost, but highlights potentials for a hybridized initiative, the cooperation of multiple parties with singular and collective benefit. The program then originates from the potentials circulating the sites and in service to the desires and demands of the city, specifically using the strategies of previous action plans that call for events occurring along the river. These interventions are articulated through small and tactical operations that can be built upon over time on an as needed basis. The placement of these elements is intended to recover citizen’s desires such as swimming in the river, walking through the woods, enjoying clean water and experiencing wild environments in the middle of Jacksonville’s city center.

project implementation In order to suggest a new relation with such long, pronounced geography, creating specialized action clusters that allow the formation of zones - made out of a new interaction with the waterfront. This interaction can be supported by initiatives around the city as means of bringing the citizens back to the river through innovative means of recreation and participation. This then becomes the foundation for accretionary, tactical responses. In thinking of these tactics in relation to the conditions, I have broken them up into what I see as 3 essential actions that can work together as a structuring device - to enable to link and to transform. Enabling is the ability to access sites in a new way through restructuring corridors and riverfront social facilitators that feed off of existing infrastructures. Linking is the proposal of connecting and expanding zones, creating new zones, through pedestrian paths and bridges, as well as reforestation processes, connecting cultural infrastructure to new social and environmental areas. Transforming is about the image of the city and how people associate with the river. Through essential structural, environmental adjustment projects in conjunction with public programs, a suggested reassociation with the river can be initiated.

PREVIOUS: ABANDONED SITE IN RIVERSIDE, DOWNTOWN JACKSONVILLE

CLOCKWISE STARTING FROM OPPOSITE LEFT: ALI BABA CIRCLE, MIAMI | UNFINISHED LANDMAR RESIDENTIAL TOWER, JACKSONVILLE | UNFINISHED HOUSING DEVELOPMENT ORLANDO | REMNANTS OF UNFINISHED DI LIDO ISLAND, MIAMI

CHICAGO: -1.8%

POPULATION CHANGE FROM DOMESTIC MIGRATION, 2010 TO 2013 DATA: US CENSUS BUREAU

LOS ANGELES: -1.3%

IGNITING THE URBAN REALM second tier revisited Recent articles from the US Census Bureau verify statistically what many have seen unofficially the growing population of second-tier cities from larger US cities.1 This rapid movement has led to the resurgence of interest in the urban core as a place for culture, society and historical identity for cities across the US. With increases of up to 15% in tourism and the overall affordability of second-tier cities staying consistent, competition arises as to the attraction of one city over another. When marketing a second-tier city, it is dependent on the brand.

Because of the old assets, such as rivers and rails that once gave these cities their strength no longer serve the same purpose, new assets and identities must be drawn upon, and the former must be used in new ways.

abuse and Abandonment

Many older assets face similar problems of abuse and subsequent decay as they pertain to industrial areas. Due to the exploitation of social, ecological or industrial resources, centers of production begin to remiss leaving abandoned Cities like San Francisco or Orlando have already warehouses and remnants of former times in well-established brands that resonate in a their wake. The now unclaimed land typically consumers mind, but with most second-tier cities exists as a tarnished territory desperate for there exists an opportunity for development. In repurposing. many cases, temporary initiatives are started to bring about activity in dead zones within The river that was once used for transportation of the urban core - the necessity of crowds to fuel goods and services has been replaced by highway development. These initiatives are typically infrastructure and no longer contributes to an not long lasting, rather it is the result of their active image of production in most second-tier ignition (shops opening, districts forming) that cities. Initiating potential for such a prominent geography gives the basis for reusing a former lingers on as the basis for urban development. lifeline to the city as a new type of infrastructure.

METRO AREA : SECOND TIER CITIES

NEW YORK: -1.9%

LOST POPULATION GREW 0-2.5% GREW >2.5%

1. austin 2. raleigh 3. san antonio 4 denver 5. charlotte 6. nashville 7. jacksonville 8. orlando 9. houston 10. dallas

5.4 % 11. new orleans phoenix 3.7 % 12. tampa 3.2 % 13. 2.9 % 14. portland oklahoma city 2.6 % 15. seattle 2.6 % 16. richmond 2.6 % 17. atlanta 2.3 % 18. 2.1 % 19. san francisco las vegas 2.1 % 20.

positioning the architect Although limited in the amount of involvement Considering the material aspect of the practices in city development, architects themselves have of architecture and planning (i.e. ecology or assumed a lesser role when it comes to critical engineering), the focus should be less involved aspects of planning - positions of function, scope, with the aesthetic outcomes of a building or technique and implementation. There exists an project and more interested in what their affective important distinction for architects to make as operation is. As Stan Allen references Michel designers of systems, that is, while they may not Foucault: have the power to ensure or generate investment in developmental infrastructure, they can still “As Foucault has reminded us, techniques are focus their attention to territorial organization social beforeurbanism) they are technical. Hence, to think of (extractions of Stan Allen’s infrastructural and functionality. architecture as a material practice does not mean leaving questions of meaning entirely behind. Architects, when faced with the scenario of Material practices are not about expression; implementing projects for developing cities, have rather they condense, transform, and materialize the opportunity to use their cultural knowledge concepts.” 2 over technical service. In the gathering of this cultural knowledge - typically the acquisition Architecture’s ability to indicate is a significant of layers of information pertaining to both local tool to the architect working in the city. It is the and global conditions of the site and its society employment of cultural and social ingredients - it is of utmost importance for architects to use along with physical materials that can have a their training to understand not only the factual, profound stimulation to an urban center, especially quantitative aspects of this information, but also those longing for reinvention, repurpose, and the sensual, qualitative - in most cases subtly rearrangement.2 nuanced - aspects of the place.2

2.0 % 1.9 % 1.7 % 1.4 % 1.3 % 1.3 % 0.9 % 0.9 % 0.8 % 0.8 %

the reconstruction of the city

(Castells)

As Castells points out, the major challenge in contemporary urban design is to restore the culture of cities. According to Castells’ notable contribution to social theory, The Rise of the Network Society, a paradigm shift is occurring in which information, image and representation are replacing the power relations traditionally established and reproduced in institutions.3 These outcomes and challenges to the social conditions of the network society are determined through redefining cultural codes and proposing alternative meaning in society. In this case, the affirmation of identity is crucial - affixing meaning autonomously through the abstract, essential logic of networks. There is an urban paradox that we are living principally in an urban world without cities - that is without a system of cultural understanding and shared meaning, even if conflictive shared meaning. Around the world, signs of symbolic disintegration in the urban realm are multiplying. What we must realize is that it is not of a larger structural impetus that is determining our cities - it is by conscious human operation that societies and built form are produced. It is a complex juxtaposed relationship: along with typical capitalist emphasis and privatization of space there is also a growing attraction of urbanity, civic life, and meaningful spaces.3 Castells emphasizes four communicative players in the reconstruction of the city: planning, architecture, urban design, and urban policy. Planning, according to Castells, must be able to properly balance and linkup global and local networks without opposing the two planes of operation.3 This means that planning should, in fact, lead to multiple sub-centers within the metropolis, but have in connection effective transportation in acceptance of this multi-

nodality. Architecture then becomes the creation at the nodes, emphasizing a new symbolism of local and global significance. As historically so, architecture has a task of restoring symbolic meaning, but in a 21st century world in crisis of communication.3 In recent years we have seen a shocking revival of architectural importance, such as the case of Frank Gehry’s museum in Bilbao, in which complete cities, and in this case regions, can not only be culturally but also economically revitalized through a single architectural move. Symbolic meaning must be dispersed into the entirety of the city, in which urban design takes the stage. Urban design must primarily designate or provide public spaces which can foster the connection of local life, global flows, the individual, and communities. Public space is the key contributor to urban experience, unlike that of a private shopping center mistaken as spaces of sociability. The function of these spaces is not always necessary to predetermine as they typically do not come from even the best urban designers - sometimes it is a park, sometimes a boulevard, sometimes a few square feet around the library. In any case, the spontaneity of use, flexibility of interaction, lack of social constraints, and multiculturalism is what matters in the creation of important symbolic social spaces. Though as Castells says, “It is the struggle of the polis to create the city as a meaningful place.” 3 Urban policy is the main determinant to the potential of urban space in conjunction with a connection to the global space of flows and to the local space of places. This direction must be an adaptive one, resulting from a compromise between the contradictory expression on values and interests from the plurality of urban actors.

BOSTON NEW YORK

WASHINGTON DC LEXINGTON KNOXVILLE

ATLANTA LOS ANGELES SAVANNAH TUCSON EL PASO

INTERSTATE CONNECTIONS TO JACKSONVILLE

HOUSTON

JACKSONVILLE

MIAMI

away from a new URBANISM “The cities everyone wants to live in should be clean and safe, possess efficient public services, be supported by a dynamic economy, provide cultural stimulation, and also do their best to heal society’s divisions of race, class, and ethnicity. These are not the cities we live in.” -Richard SENNET T, The Open City 4

In The Open City, Richard Sennett suggests that the conditions that look towards disorder and chaos lend themselves more to experimentation both of the city’s visual forms and social functions than do conditions of order and control.4 The idea of ‘predictive urbanism’ or the way in which city development follows strict regulations, images and plans, gives undoubtedly a loss to the vitality of urban imagination. According to Sennett, it is a sense of time that is missing in modern urbanism that is the city understood as a process, its imagery changing through use, an urban imagination formed by anticipation.

The result of today’s cities in the context of urbanism is a homogeneity of interchangeable spaces.

‘AS AN URBANIST, LE CORBUSIER IS A FASCIST NIGHTMARE’

-Michael SORKIN 5

We can attribute the ethics of modernism to the fall of imagination in our cities. One of the most notable projects was Le Corbusier’s ‘Plan Voisin’ for Paris in the 1920s.5 Corbusier conceived of a series of extruded cross-shaped towers that were meant to organize a seemingly cluttered ground condition. These towers would eliminate the fertile social complexity of the ground plane,

segregating civic life from the people living and working in vertical isolation, all coordinated by a single master plan. This project had profound global effects on other cities in terms of zoning, programming, and building type, as well as the production of buildings following the mantra of Le Corbusier’s ‘industrial manufacture of buildings’. Most urban architecture today - in particular New Urbanism - dangerously accepts Cartesian planning as the default means of organizing the city. There is a dependency on the grid that is an acceptance of a guiding formal structure that acts in ignorance towards the contextual conditions, such as topography and cultural differentiation, of the locale. This dependency has led to many ineffective urban spaces of value. Such channels of plan making and social intervention - acts of curatorial urbanism - cannot contend with an increasingly interconnected and diverse new world.6

away from traditon

f orm er U n i o n T er mina l conv erted to c o nv en t i o n c en t er J acks onv il l e, FL

A lack of urbanism to shape and maintain the quality of “location” in the rapidly urbanizing world has been a major failure of modern cities across the world. Like commodities from a production line, we have been developing cities like industrial merchandise, measuring them in undifferentiated square footage, while marking them with names that stimulate nostalgia for community life. A shopping mall is now a “town center”, a multi-theater movie complex is now an “entertainment district”, or an office park an “innovation district”. This is not the carefully crafted product of a community that has strategies and methods for building and maintaining urban advantage in the world. Building blocks grow larger and larger as political and economic bodies aggregate, often assembled with little context and under furiously accelerated timelines.7 Traditional master plans have been understood to take areas of disused or unplanned land and envision a distribution of land uses that conduct a beneficial future for the city. These plans typically include predetermined spatial requirements and land uses for a variety of interactive scenarios. The concluding plans are based upon surveys and statistics of the area as to what a suitable direction should be for the development of the city. These plans rarely achieve their targets.7

The areas of which master plans are repeatedly attacked for being restrictive and ineffective are in terms of content, process, implementation and monitoring. In addition, the process of planning is also affected by improper development phasing, lack of accountability and finance, as well as insufficient monitoring. Guiding physical development is the objective of the master plan scope, though it is usually confined to broad proposals and allocating land for optimistic and varied uses. The plan is usually fitted for expectations of 20-25 years, which does not act in accordance with the contingent, stop-and-go pace of the environment, economy and society.8 When one reads the city, it is typically looked at in plan, in other words understood as a top-down, two-dimensional way of mapping and orienting. To be more explicit, the city is much more than the perimeter outlines of elements - it is built form, people, fluctuating areas of society and economy, and political scenarios. Due to ineffective compositions of plans and lack of consideration, planning proposals have become irrelevant and meaningless. It is the disconnectedness of plan preparation and plan implementation that has lead to a widening gap between the master plan proposal and the built environment.

evolving the citysystem

‘IT IS THE PRODUCT OF A COMMUNITY, RICH OR POOR, THAT HAS MASTERED A ROBUST PRACTICE OF URBANISM’ - Jeb BRUGMANN

In Welcome to the Urban Revolution, Jeb Brugmann dissects the development of cities into four broad categories: the ad hoc city building, city systems, city models, and the master-planned city. In his section City systems, Brugmann argues that the empirical knowledge gained from the community and the advantages that when used together enhance the city’s “utility, efficiency, productivity and emotional benefit ‘sense of place’ ”. In this approach to building cities, a symbiotic relationship is made between all members of the community as a refined practice of urbanism. It is then an informing tool for establishing networks within the city that consistently promote a community’s strategic ambitions in the city. The comparison Brugmann makes is that of an industrial facility that serves a manufacturing company or an ecological habitat that supports a species’ community. According to Bruggman: “The city system has to be designed and brought to life by the community of people who will use it as a hyper-productive system to achieve their own ambitious common purpose. In reference to a network of shared advantages, Dharavi, one of the largest slums of Mumbai, is an example of

‘ad hoc urbanism’ turned into an urbanism of strategic ambitions, that in its own context is not just a dense formation of building, but a community that supports distinctive kinds of production and trade, of governance and society, and of resource and environmental conditions.”9 As in many second-tier cities, a leveling of hierarchy in which many urban decisions go through a multivalent approval process has been a tradition of development, though still many fail to understand in detail the advantages and disadvantages. Major projects of the 1960s-70s, such as the replacement of former business districts or industrial areas with master-planned convention centers or office complexes, have moved almost cyclically into a similar condition as an urban dead zone. It is crucial that architects and planners look at the misaligned development of their cities as something that can be casually determined rather than formulaic in the future. In doing so with consideration to the networks, or city systems, at hand, accretionary development based on strategies of advantage emerges as a means to arrive at flexible answers to our ever-changing paradigm-shifting, urban realm.

Propositions of accretion and tactic “The order is not rationalistic and underlying but is simply order, like that of continuity, one thing after another.” -Donald JUDD 2

Learning from the Way Migrants Build Their Cities An ad hoc city builds on the terms of incremental addition, typically for tactical, individualistic reasons; each builder’s concern is within the confines of their own building without concern for the others or succeeding construction. Ad hoc building is not a development type that is led by holistic purpose. Architects, trained to consider context via permissible activities, form, material, or landscaping, are still up against the lack of fundamental functional relationships in an ad hoc scenario. The relationship between buildings and their activities is an experimental one. Though sometimes, an ad hoc experiment can be surprisingly successful, as in the case of the slums in Dharavi. If the builders share interests and a common understanding of a location’s unique advantages - if they share strategy to advance their interests through an urban location - then they can master ways to increase those advantages together, and regulate

activities and construction that dilute it. The major extraction from ad hoc cities is the means by which they develop, the strategized one-thing-then-another approach when addressing development in second-tier cities. The increasingly collaborative means by which most American cities develop lends themselves to cautious actions, yet deliberate in execution. Collaboration in conjunction with forces that are both surrounding and cultivated from the site give architects and planners the data for insightful urban development. These forces, typically acting by means of what I will refer to as fluid hierarchy, are necessary to be deliberately channelled into a knowledge of operations. These tactics of accretion are achieved by the following methodology: data synthesi s program and systems acti on of locati on sites as urban catalysts fl exi bl i ty suggestive outputs l egi bi l i ty signage and reticul ation temporal i ty return to nothing if needed

for mer U ni on Ter mi nal conver ted to conventi on center Jacksonvi lle, FL

In the following respective sections, each area of methodology will be explored in terms of concept and precedent.

data synthesis // program and systems “The field describes a space of propagation, of effects. It contains no matter or material points, rather functions, vectors and speeds. It describes local relations of difference within fields of celerity, transmission or of careering points, in a word, what Minkowski called the world.” -S a n fo r d K WI N TE R 2 Through a thorough gathering of data and information surrounding site locations, of which has variance from site to site, an illustration of conditions can be made to give insight into the complex and dynamic behaviors of architecture’s users. As a means of speculating program and space, or as Ben van Berkel refers to Deep Planning, tracking as a means of system movement throughout the confines and surroundings of a site leads to the definition of positioning the site.* The site must accommodate the conditions in and of the surroundings. As a means of contextual tactics, the constraints

precedent UCLA L.A. Now Projected Population Growth Centers, 2020

are treated with optimism, that they are not neglected into transgression. “Form matters, but not so much the forms of things as the forms between things.” -St an ALLEN 2 With the volatile state of sites, and the everchanging conditions surrounding them, it is important to understand that the information gained must be used projectively and with great concern for the future of sites. As a means of benefitting the context before and the context to come, new architectures of the city should keep in reach ammunition for productive futures. It is an architecture that is not invested in certainty, but rather ‘leaves space for the uncertainty of the real’. The resulting solutions interrogate a broad range of socio-economic, political, cultural, demographic, and infrastructural issues in spatial and architectural terms.

LA Now, Thom Mayne and UCLA’s investigations into defining what Los Angeles (as a city, concept, and experience) is. In a way, the periodical functions as an almanac, giving a graphical report of problems, needs, and persona of the city. Population density models, district zoning, local zoning and adjacent scale comparisons were heightened in their relationship to defining the conditions of the city. As John Kaliski, contributor to LA Now, writes:

for mer U ni on Ter mi nal conver ted to conventi on center Jacksonvi lle, FL

“Whether traffic- and transportation-based, census-based, flood plain-based, open space-based, economic-based, or otherwise-based, the sustained research into the actual conditions of the city produced results that are a reflection of the possibilities of present everyday life seen through the filter of to the range of pressures, fluxes, and opportunities that impact the contemporary city.”

action of location // catalytic sites Acupuncture is a balancing and regulating therapy in traditional Chinese medicine that is also prevalent in the Western world as part of the practices of complementary and alternative medicine. With a few pinpricks, the energy flow of the whole body is meant to be put back into balance. Analogous to this, architects and planners understand small interventions as acupuncture when their effect reaches far beyond the locale. That which exists is not ignored, let alone eliminated, but transformed through a skillful diversion of existing energies. The city is meant to regenerate itself solely through slight external interventions. In the process, the time factor

plays an essential role: “acupuncture” on the city’s “body” counts on the time between the intervention and its effect. Since the interventions, which are themselves often minimal, can be of a temporary or permanent character, temporality as such becomes a variable of the strategy. Awareness rises as our familiarities with sites grow; function and use create memory that informs logic and position of place. For many second-tier cities, the extents of the urban center are typically shrouded by an array of industrial or highway zones giving way to the ambiguity of territory and order. In many cases, the locations in which accretionary development can work best to develop secondtier cities are not positioned in existing highfunctioning zones, but rather in zones which are

for all intents and purposes dead. Types of nonsite zones can be understood as leftover sites: deemed as non-parcelable land (such as a formation from the intersection of highways) discarded sites: post-anything abandonment The action of these sites is the determined by the user and the surrounding site conditions. As projects that instigate a change in use come about, they can have a large, potentially transformative impact at even the small scale. It is not necessarily the bold vision by an architect, planner or developer of what should be implemented, but rather the inherent properties of the site - the conditions of the economy, society, culture, and environment - that are uncovered by a respective use.

precedent Urban Think Tank Metro Cables 2007-2010 San Agustin, Caracas, Venezuela

The Metro Cable by Urban Think Tank represents an alternative response to transportation infrastructure that was approaching destruction of a favela in Caracas, Venezuela. Mass transportation, a key ingredient of connection throughout any urbanized area, will allow for the inhabitants of the densely populated favelas access to extended areas of the city. The five stations’ designs each have a similar set of basic components in common: platforms, access ramps, circulation flows, structural systems and materials. However, the configuration of these components are what creates differentiation. The separate stations include multiple cultural, social and administrative functions, such as public spaces (gym, supermarket, daycare center).10

flexibility // suggestive outputs With each location, diversity of ideas and spaces for future development fosters an equivalently rich urban texture. In taking this organic approach, in which nothing is predetermined or pure, the possibility of the temporality of intervention should be considered, as this responds to the furthermost proposition of flexibility (the other being permanence). The irresolution, impurity and unpredictability of multiple forces at play, such as local contingencies - climate, topography, urban texture, infrastructure, information flows directly into the articulation of transition between what is and what will be. The action of accretion, that is the end of one project signifying a response for the next, brings forth a contrasting method to that of

precedent Stan Allen Architects Logistical Activities Zone Competition 1996 Barcelona, Spain

In the competition for the Barcelona Logistical Activities Zone (ZAL), Stan Allen’s scheme called for site suggestions rather than a concrete site plan. An over-arching infrastructure, an openair roof element with fabric shades, tied together a series of active programmatic patch typologies, service infrastructure, passive program and connecting corridors as a means to develop the large industrial port in a flexible way. This concept of Infrastructural Urbanism was a major theme of Allen’s Points and Lines which portrayed urban growth as a process of making contexual nodes using the ‘field conditions’ and coupling them with social and service infrastructure. In the case of ZAL, the infrastructure could be assembled and disassembled on an programmatic and siterelated basis. 2

precedent Morphosis Architects College Avenue Master Plan 2006 New Brunswick, New Jersey

In 2006, Morphosis preoposed a core redevelopment and vision plan for Rutgers University at College Avenue. The plan is based around a contingent schedule for the university and has provided a framework that presents seven different methods to achieving the programmatic requirements over time. This projective method of planning, in which multiple phases are played out in different scenarios, allows for accretionary growth according to the availabilities of the client. Each method starts with the same component which is meant to connect the main street (College Avenue) to the underutilized Raritan River. This new intersection for the campus, also being a student union, forms a core for the campus that follows the strategic reconnection intentions set forth by the university. 11

typical urban production through the creation of flexible frameworks, supple systems in which program, events and activities can grow out of circumstance. As one action is taken, a reaction can be made as would an opponent in chess. Taking an optimistic view of the future of these sites, the city as a ‘project of development’ anticipates the participation of different architects, agencies and individuals in the construction of the sites, that is the means by which we are defining perimeters for locations of possibility. Working without the bureaucratic tools of zoning - regulations or codes - it seeks to establish frameworks, layers that disperse or fragment in a non-linear process.

legibility // signage and reticulation As sites and districts develop in decentralized locations, how do we locate them and how do these sites add to the users’ understanding of the order of the city? It is no longer the singular use of the Cartesian top-down grid that informs our understanding of a location, but rather the understanding of markers of culture, society, economics, environment that unravel the events of the city. Landmarks as a type of point-reference involve the singling out of one element from a host of possibilities. In Kevin Lynch’s Image of the City, he refers to landmarks as identity and potentially even structure, and seem to be increasingly relied upon as a journey becomes more and more familiar.12 The ability for these landmarks to have a certain characteristic to stand amongst themselves as a figure-background relationship lends itself to be the core principle. According to Lynch, the landmark is able to be established in two ways: by having visibility from many locations, or by setting up a local variation that contrasts its surroundings. 12 The strength of a landmark is in direct dependence to its surroundings, that is once meaning, history, or a sign becomes instilled to an object, its understanding as a landmark rises. In other words, there needs to be a strong

relationship the understanding of the use and development of the space around the landmark.12 In many second-tier cities, there does not exist multiple orders of understanding the body or breadth of the city. The grid, for most cases, is the system by which infrastructure and locating come about. Another consideration is the lack of restrictions on the height of building in many urban cores - it is not like Athens, in which you cannot build higher than their most praised historical monument, the Parthenon, or in Bali, in which you cannot build higher than their most prevalent natural feature, the palm tree. As with the Burma Shave signs, which were well-known for their short parable-ish sayings, a means of serial reference can be portrayed through the intervention in elements of repetition. This superimposition of an alternate logic to the city, one that reflects its development, can act as signage for not only the future of the city, but also for the history of the selected sites. As these sites are in many cases leftover or discarded, it marks the social, economic, and cultural attitudes of time and place.

precedent Kevin Lynch // Donald Appleyard The View From the Road 1958 Boston, Massachusetts

The View From the Road depicts through diagram traveling the interstate starting in Boston and heading north. Through this means of documenting or ‘mapping’ the city, elements of a landscape, landmarks create a legibility that is native to all second-tier cities - from the car. The picturesque landscape has entered into the narrative of the journey and city due to the increasing speed of travel and communication, taken until recently primarily by car. The book provides documentation of the scenography and choreography of movement and flows, of views to the interior through the exterior and vice versa, and the landscapes beyond. The book was a pivotal means of urban exploration and mapping, turning away from conventions of city maps and relaying more to memory of place. 13

temporality // return to nothing Temporary interventions were propagandized, for example, by the British architectural group, Archigram. Their Instant City project of 1968 to 1970 was intended to revitalize cities beyond the metropolises by means of a kind of migratory idea-circus. Using mobile equipment, local events were to be stimulated; ideas and concepts brought along were to be incorporated. The cities along the route were to be networked - it was hoped that a virtual metropolis would develop. 14 At the same time, groups of Austrian architects and artists experimented with related performances and installations. For instance, Haus-RuckerCo.’s project as part of an exhibition in Dusseldorf used a 225-square-meter air mattress and three plastic balls as an opportunity for museum goers to have physical activity and exercise, blurring

precedent Raumlabor Spacebuster // Kitchen Monument 2009 New York

The Spacebuster was conceived as a means to stimulate and explore the qualities and possibilities of public space in New York City. It forms a dialog rich in the perception of architectural space vs. social space and opens up each urban location for temporary cooperative use. Spacebuster was built using a simple step van and large inflatable ‘bubble’ in which people step into through the back of the van. The clarity of the bubble gives direct relationship between the event on the interior and exterior of the bubble. Interior functions complemented and contrasted the exterior functions, such as community meetings held in their rough, respective parts of town. 15

precedent Aldo Rossi Teatro del Mundo Venice Biennale 1980 Venice, Italy

The floating theater was built under a joint commission from the theater and architecture sections of the 1980 Venice Biennale. It was seen as the progeny of sixteenth-century floating pavilions. The Teatro was built at the Fusina shipyards and towed by sea to the Punta della Dogana, a spot, accordint to Rossi, that “seemed to me a place where architecture ended and the world of imagination or even the irrational began”. It was anchored there through the duration of the Biennale. Afterward it traveled by sea to the Dalmatian coast of Yugoslavia, calling at coastal towns like Dubrovnik that were original Venetian colonies. It was later dismantled. The Teatro is related both to the tradition of the floating building and to the idea of a structure intended to temporarily alter the landscape of the city. 16

the borders between city life and museum. Today there is a broad praxis of performancerelated interventions initiated by architects and artists. With temporary installments - including Spacebuster by Raumlabor Berlin, the physical presence lasted just a few days or weeks. The initiators of such interventions always hope that the event gives an impulse to a longer lasting development. They want to put unused spaces into the public consciousness and establish local contacts, as well as entire networks. Their goal is for citizens to have greater participation in urban development, explaining the use of a social event at the core of such interventions. It is meant to give certain urban clarity and aesthetic presence to the artistic creation.

Archigram, Instant City, 1968-1970

CLOCKWISE STARTING FROM OPPOSITE LEFT: JACKSONVILLE JAGUARS STADIUM | WILLOWBRANCH INLET CANAL | RIVERSIDE ARTS MARKET | COMMODORE POINT EXPRESSWAY

CLOCKWISE STARTING FROM OPPOSITE LEFT: QUEENS HARBOUR YACHT CLUB | FLORIDA THEATER | HEMMING PLAZA | FORMER HAYDON BURNS LIBRARY

30 miles

population density 2013 - Jacskonville / duval county DATA: US CENSUS BUREAU

White alone - 452,959 (54.1%) Black alone - 247,763 (29.6%) Hispanic - 68,794 (8.2%) Asian alone - 36,806 (4.4%) Two or more races - 24,580 (2.9%) American Indian alone - 2,303 (0.3%) Other race years | Estimated median household income in 2012: $42,800 (it was $40,316 in 2000) Estimated median house or condo value in 2012: $127,500 (it was $84,100 in 2000) Mean prices in 2011: All housi

jacksonville, florida the bold new city of the south population: 836,507

area: 874 sq mi

population density: 1,100 / sq mi

he city of Jacksonville is in a current state of transition. Like many other second-tier cities, the urban core has become a central figure in many political and private agendas as a means to restore the social, economic, environmental and cultural integrity to the most historical region of the city. It was fundamental for the research to look at innovative strategies and tactics in redeveloping unpredictable urban areas. Many of the initiatives taken by both the public and private sectors regarding dead zones of the urban core have led to indeterminate futures - in many cases large scale projects that involved staggering amounts of investment have yielded little return in the form of city development. One of the most involved growth management plans for the city came in 2000; the Better Jacksonville Plan (BJP) was approved by voters as a $2.25 billion package of projects to provide road and infrastructure improvements, environmental preservation, targeted economic development and new and improved public facilities.17 The BJP was responsible for the construction of several major additions to the downtown area including Veterans Memorial Arena, Baseball Grounds, the new Main Library and Duval County Courthouse. Little investment was put into socio-cultural related programs or facilities in the urban core, and in turn the facilities built provide a majority of economic benefit to their own institution, in other words, businesses within the proximity of these facilities are only active during events for the planned facilities.17 In 2013, it was determined that the Better Jacksonville Plan had gone broke and had excessively exceeded their targeted budget, such as the nearly $400 million Duval courthouse originally planned for less than $200 million.

The Downtown Master Plan (2000) and subsequent Downtown Action Plan (2007) were city-established comprehensive approaches to activating the urban core. Their core objectives promote the basics of any functional downtown - improved walkability, making it a destination, making it a neighborhood, etc. The actions for these objectives, a series of 19 initiatives, present the city’s approach to achieving vibrancy - continual breakdown into smaller and smaller master plans. Areas of existing activity in downtown are the primary focus for the Downtown Vision Investment and Improvement District for which investment is being allocated. Many locations outside of these small areas of incubation also have promise of transformative change on the city though continually go overlooked. Jacksonvillians experienced an increased awareness of the state and potentials of their downtown during the inaugural One Spark crowd-funding festival in April 2013. The festival drew people who normally spend their lives closer to the edge of the city into the downtown, and made use of the city’s public spaces, walkable scale and metro monorail line. The event was rooted in supporting ideas for art, entertainment, music, innovation and technology, but with the series of venues chosen in the downtown area, the event tested the functionality of a large population dispersed in the urban space. It was proven a successful ‘dusting off’ at the urban scale, complete with street vendors, public transit, and re-appropriating unoccupied space. Should the joint actions of the city and public move into tactical interventions focused towards accretionary development rather than long-term visions, the momentum of redevelopment has the potential to reactivate the city at a variety of scales and weight.

population growth DATA: US CENSUS BUREAU

1800s

WWII era

1990s

present

e alone - 2,478 (0.3%) Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander alone - 823 (0.10%)Males: 405,200 (48.4%) Females: 431,307 (51.6%) | Median resident age: 35.4 years Florida median age: 40.3 ng units: $197,408; Detached houses: $210,237; Townhouses or other attached units: $157,409; In 2-unit structures: $258,280; In 3-to-4-unit structures: $125,061; In 5-or-more-unit structures:

timeline of downtown development DATA: FLORIDA TIMES UNION

great fire

french landed

1901

cowford

1562

brief film industry established warm weather and low cost of labor and housing boosted development

Following Great Britain’s defeat of France, first premanent settlement is made in present-day downtown

1600

1700

1800

1850

1900

1910

1920

San nicolas

florida land boom (& bust)

spainish displace the french and take over fort caroline

town charter approved 1859

mayors involved with downtown development plans

1930 many tourists stop in jacksonville on their way to miami giving jacksonville the nickname ‘gateway to florida’

DOWNTOWN PRARIE-STYLE HENRY JOHN KLUTHO BRINGS THE MIDWESTERN PRARIE STYLE TO MANY NEW BUILDINGS BUILT AFTER THE FIRE

mills

fletcher

martin

alsop, jr.

1832-1835

1901-1903

1917-1923

1923-1937

view of downtown from st. johns bridge 1921

BETTER JACKSONVILLE PLAN NAS JAX CONSTRUCTED 1940

$2.2 BILLION DEVELOPMENT PLAN INCLUDING LIBRARY, ARENA, BASEBALL STADIUM AND COURTHOUSE

“decade of progress”

PEDETRIAN WALKWAYS PROPOSED

IMPENDING DECLINE

multiple corporations setting up headquarters in jacksonville

PUBLIC AMENITIES BETWEEN CITY AND RIVERFRONT INITIATED

CHAMBER OF COMMERCE NOTES MUCH OF DOWNTOWN IS DESERTED ON NIGHTS AND WEEKENDS

population migration to suburbs

CONSOLIDATION

JACKSONVILLE LANDING OPENS

CITY, COUNTY GOVERNMENTS CONSOLIDATE

BUILT AS PART OF THE ‘BILLION-DOLLAR DECADE’ DEVELOPMENT PLAN

DEVELOPMENT REACTIVATES MANY REHAB PROJECT PROPOSED FOR DOWNTOWN’S OLDER BUILDINGS

HOUSING PROJECTS PROPOSED FUELED BY CITY INCENTIVE MONEY

MOCA BUILDING BOUGHT NEW MODERN ARTS FACILITY FOR THE CITY

1940

1950

1960

1970

1980

1990

2000

2010

RIVER CITY RENNAISANCE

ax handle saturday

MIGRATION REPORT

civil rights protests in hemming plaza

REPORT FINDS FEWER DOWNTOWN WORKERS SHOP DURING THE DAY, CAUSING STORES TO MOVE TO SUBURBS

2020

LANDMAR DEVELOPER FORECLOSES

$230 MILLION DEVELOPMENT PLAN INCLUDES STADIUM, CITY HALL AND PERFORMING ARTS

springfield

SUPER BOWL XXXIX

historic district initiative

railroad industry declines

NEW CONVENTION CENTER

ADAM’S MARK CONSTRUCTED

urban decay begins to set in

FORMER UNION TERMINAL CONVERTED, IN UPSET MANY DOWNTOWN DEVELOPMENT AUTHORITY MEMBERS RESIGN

RIVERFRONT HOTEL

ONESPARK FESTIVAL 2013

KUHN DEVELOPER FORECLOSES MAJOR DEVELOPER IN REHAb DEVELOPMENT

empowerment zone economic development program with incentive to brownfield sites

alsop, jr. whitehead 1941-1945

1945-1949

burns

ritter

tanzler

godbold

1949-1965

1965-1967

1967-1979

1979-1987

Hazouri austin, jr. delaney

peyton

brown

1987-1991

2003-2011

2011-

1991-1995

1995-2003

proximities : existing population densities j a c ks

o nville b eac h 20 mi

ea dow s 10 mi

a r lin

riv

g t on 7 m i

e rsid e 2 mi

Unitl recently, the urban core has gone through a dormant period in which few places or programs exist as facilitators for social life. Beginning with comparing and contrasting the land use patterns of downtown, infrastructural accessibility, trends in mobility, zones of population densities, and recent development initiatives, we can begin to get an overall image of the city and how architects and planners can begin to insert themselves in service of development.

downtown

Transportation 87%

development conditions / initiatives

It is important to identify the state at which the city interacts with its downtown. Hard and soft data was used comparatively and conjuctively by means of quantitative and historical information provided by the US Census and local municipality, as well as, qualitative information provided by interviews with local inhabitants and first hand observations of the conditions of the city.

mandarin 15 mi

bay m

sustaining interest

5% 4% 4%

91%

2% 3% 4%

94%

JAX (metro)

2% 2% 2%

downtown specs 1,234 acres • $600 million in completed or in progress development in 2012 • $551 million in proposed development • 3 Fortune 500 headquarters • 1,100 businesses • 48,105 employees • 7.3 million square • feet of office space • 2,365 residences • 9 million visits annually • 724,000 square feet of retail space in the DID • 90 restaurants • 30 bars • 122 retailers and services • 2.77 miles of Riverwalk • 2,153 hotel rooms • 43,452 parking spaces

RECREATION

COMMERCIAL

Reflecting multiple political agendas, the downtown is a new and important focal point for the municipality. Over 1,700 residents have come to the downtown, in which the city has provided new spaces for more than 661 over the past two years. As the city begins to allocate funding for amenities necessary to foster a growing urban population, it is important to recognize the potentials of multiple actors to work together towards social projects. Much of downtown is isolated from its larger context, in which the Downtown Investment District exists only within a 7 by 7 block area. The $5,000,000,000 intentions of the mayor’s office to make downtown $4,500,000,000 a ‘destination’ is contingent on the activation of $4,000,000,000 $3,500,000,000 downtown by its outside population, that is to say $3,000,000,000 not only the inhabitants of downtown should have $2,500,000,000 interest in the well-being of the downtown. $2,000,000,000 $1,500,000,000 $1,000,000,000 tertiary nodes $500,000,000 0

Secondary and caused by sprawl and automobiles as the primary means2006of 2004 2005 transportation have made this reconnection proposed inherently more difficult. Though there is a growing interest in urbanity and the resuscitation of urban centers, the interest must sustain through the overlap of the public and institutions. As typical development occurs, we must be active, in a way even subversive or critical, in reaction to it.

inDUSTRIAL

REDEVELOPMENt

downtown investment district $5,000,000,000 $4,500,000,000 current$4,000,000,000 downtown action plan emphasizes $3,500,000,000 projects that intend to push downtown into the $3,000,000,000 fabric of the generic maritime city with little $2,500,000,000 emphasis $2,000,000,000 on local conditions or sites outside $1,500,000,000 the immediate downtown core $1,000,000,000 $500,000,000 0 2004 2005 2006 2007 proposed

2008

under construction

waterfront beautification

the number of downtown residents has increased by 125% since 2004

total downtown investment 2000-2012 2007

2008

under construction $5,000,000,000 $4,500,000,000 $4,000,000,000 $3,500,000,000 $3,000,000,000 $2,500,000,000 $2,000,000,000 $1,500,000,000 $1,000,000,000 $500,000,000 0 2004 2005

2009

2010

2011

2012

completed

2006 proposed

RESIDENTIAL

2007

2008

under construction

2009

2010

2011

2012

completed

PUBLIC BLDGS

$ 1 6 9 ,8 2 9; Mobi le homes: $ 87 , 009; Occupie d b oats, RVs, va n s, e tc. : $ 8 5, 86 3 | Me dia n gr o s s r e n t in 2 0 12 : $ 8 86 | C i t y P o p u l at i o n 1 9 8 0 : 5 4 0 ,9 20 1 9 9 0 : 6 3 5 ,23 0 20 0 0 : 7 3 5 ,6 1 7 20 0 3 : 7 7 3 ,7 8 1 20 1 4 S e c t or s : f i nance, i nsu ra n ce , gove rn me n t, ma n ufac tur in g, w h o l e s a l e a n d r e ta il tr a de Un e mpl oy me n t r ate : 5 . 9 % (Ap r i l 20 1 4 ) P e r C ap i ta I nc o m e : $20 ,3 3 7 (20 1 0 ) | 20 1 2 F B I C r i m e I nd e x T o ta

city genetics GROWING CITY LOCATION

IDENTITY

CULTURE

LANDSCAPE URBAN FABRIC ACCESIBILITY NETWORKS

HISTORY/HERITAGE INDUSTRY/PRODUCTION IMAGE

EXISTING ARTS ECOLOGY INSTITUTION TYPE CULTURAL DEMAND

10TH FASTEST GROWING CITY IN THE US

LARGEST CITY (AREA)

COASTAL ZONE

URBAN RIVER

12 MILES FROM URBAN CORE

PRIVATIZED WATERFRONT 2% OF RIVERFRONT USED FOR PUBLIC SPACE

AREA: 865 SQ MILES

RIVER HEALTH IS QUESTIONABLE TOXIC ALGAE BLOOMS IN 2004 + 2012 = MASSIVE FISH KILLS

BISECTS DOWNTOWN AND CITY

SMALL TOWN, BIG CITY

PORT CITY

ACCESSIBILITY SPRAWL LIMITED INEFFICIENT MASS TRANSIT CONNECTIONS

NEW URBANISM INITIATIVES IN FOUNDED ON THE SHIPPING INDUSTRY DOWNTOWN/SPRINGFIELD DISTRICT

BETWEEN THE BEACHES AND DOWNTOWN

FEW REMNANTS OF INDUSTRY

PORT OF JACKSONVILLE

URBAN FIRES AND RELOCAION OF PORT HAVE SEVERED THE PORT IMAGE FROM DOWNTOWN

#2 IMPORT LOCATION FOR AUTOMOBILES

IDENTITY CRISIS

LACK OF CLEAR DOWNTOWN IMAGE AND DISCONNECTION OF CITY

DOUGLAS ANDERSON SCHOOL

JAX2025

ONE SPARK

ART SCHOOL IN DOWNTOWN SERVING AS AN ARTS INCUBATOR FOR YOUTH

GRASSROOTS VISION PLAN FOR THE CITY

ANNUAL CROWD FUNDING FESTIVAL FOR CREATIVES IN ARTS + TECH

DIVERSE ECONOMY, LOW UNEMPLOYMENT

MAINLY VISUAL ARTS FOCUSED MUSEUMS AND GALLERIES

7.1% UNEMPLOYMENT, BELOW NATIONAL AVERAGE

DISCONNECTED

PEOPLE

LEADERS FUNDING DEMOGRAPHICS

contamination and inactivity

downtown

SHAD KAHN

‘off the grid’ program

OWNER OF JACKSONVILLE JAGUARS PROPONENT OF DOWNTOWN REVITALIZATION

+50,000 sq ft of vacant retail rented to artists with

MAYOR BROWN

YOUNG CITY

SUPPORT IN THE ARTS AND REVITALIZATION OF URBAN CORE

POPULATION MAJORITY BETWEEN AGES OF 18-44

To make downtown, once and for all, the destination and opportunity for all...

The downtown and its waterfront are major focal points for tourism yet have little association in the lives of most locals

We’re going to be looking at how can there be better access and equity to all the arts organizations and all the arts experiences that are here in Jacksonville...

The Shipyards can be greatly enhanced to bring economic vibrancy to Downtown. It’s the face and a very, very high profile property...

commodore point

south bank

inadvertent waterfront brownfield // superfund sites epa expansion zone

alvin brown

shad kahn

darrell ayers

mayor of jacksonville

owner, jacksonville jaguars

vp of education, the kennedy center

Mayor Alvin Brown’s $11 million reinvestment plan calls for $9 million to leverage private dollars for Downtown improvement, and an additional $2 million is slated for citywide economic expansion.

Khan has made inroads into Downtown investment already. In April, his Stache Investments Corp. financed the acquisition by a private group of the Laura Street Trio and former Barnett Bank Building Downtown. “I think for me, it’s really about committing to a community,” Khan said.

Jacksonville will become the 14th city to be part of “Ensuring the Arts for Any Given Child,” a program from The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., that creates long-range arts education plans for students in grades K-8

landuse + Remediation

ZONING

The zoning and development of downtown has lead to a centralized business district with peripheral industrial and residential clusters - many of which are located along primary or secondary bodies of water with large intermittent inactive zones between. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has allocated $1,000,000 in funding for 10 showcase communities, of which Jacksonville is Region 4. The EPA is undergoing water quality assessments in bodies of water within Region 4 as well as the brownfields and superfind sites that have impacted these waterways. Groundwork USA, a non-profit organization that looks to restore abandoned parks around the country, has selected downtown Jacksonville, primarily its parks surrounding bodies of water, as a new chapter location. With the number of sites along the river being abandoned, tactical actions in the redevelopment of the city’s ‘face’ must occur in support and accomodation to the revitalizing institutions.

4 : 83 6, 5 07 A re a: 758 s q u ar e mile s (2 000) E le vation : ran ge s fr o m s e a l e v e l to 71 fe e t Av e r age A n n ua l Te mpe r atu r e : 6 8 . 0 ° F Av e r ag e Annu al P r e c i p i tat i o n: 5 1 . 3 i nc he s M aj o r E c o no m i c al: 51, 0 2 1 | Re g i s ter ed Sex Offe n de rs: 1993 (2 014) | Maj or C o l l e ge s a n d Un iv e r s itie s : Un iv e r s ity o f N o r th Fl o r ida , J ac kso nv i l l e U ni v e r si t y, F l o r i da stat e C o l l e g e at J ac kso nv i l l e

west

Hogan Creek

{

downtown

Main St

I-10

Mc Coy Cre ek

illa

la v

Riverside Avenue

{

ers riv

Bay St

I-9

6 4

2 3

{

/ e/

southbank

existing infrastuctures // monumments, mobility, zones : hydrology The majority of activity in the urban core of Jacksonville is located within what is considered the ‘Spark District’, a core redevelopment area spanning a 6 block square area. This area, though crucial to the success of making downtown a destination, lacks enough exposure to the interstates that pass through and around the downtown. The zones adjacent to the highways offer no more than views of post-industrial sites or urban decay, giving an image of vacancy to the majority passing by. From the heights of the bridges, one can get an overlook of the downtown in passing, from the perspective of the river. The city’s ability to draw people in can be directly influenced by a new relationship with such a large natural resource, though for the most part is currently inactive and underutilized.

east

to beaches 10 9

J St.

r ive R ’s hn

r ive R Arlington

city center

I-95

monuments

1 FEDERAL COUTRHOUSE

CITYBIKE BIKE SHARE HUB

HUB // MAJOR STATION // MINOR STATION SKYWAY ROUTE

4 JACKSONVILLE LANDING 5 HEMMING PLAZA

7 FLORIDA THEATER

RIVERWALK

1/4

3 FRIENDSHIP FOUNTAIN 6 MUSEUMS

COMMERCIAL RAIL LINE ACTIVE RIVERFRONT

2 PERFORMING ARTS CENTER

8 FORMER SHIPYARDS

1mile

9 JAGUARS STADIUM // SPORTS COMPLEX

10 FORMER PORT 11 ACTIVE PORT

12 CHURCH DISTRICT

LOCATING OPPORTUNITY In 1950, Jacksonville was a thriving industrial port city with an urban area lined with piers and wharfs. The proximity of these shippingrelated activities to the urban core led to a vibrant downtown, where people not only worked, but also maintained their livelihood. As with many other second-tier port cities, Jacksonville

was deeply affected by the paradigm shifts in shipping and the means by which we have adjusted to the contemporary import/export industry. The decline of downtown Jacksonville started after World War II as the cv

UNDERUTILIZED ASSET The St. Johns River, Jacksonville’s primary natural resource, was recently the focus of a study regarding the assets of the city. Asked to name the most important asset to the region, only 28 percent of metro area respondents named the St. Johns River. Nearly two-thirds put Navy bases at the top. Nearly half didn’t see a direct connection between their personal actions and the river’s health.18 In many European cities, rivers are often regarded as cultural landmarks. In post-industrial areas like the Ruhr Region, a cultural landscape has superceded the once-industrial landscape, incorporating educational and recreational infrastructure. The St, Johns river occupies a

30mile stretch through the city, with its shores representing the densest areas of population. Half a dozen bridges cross the St Johns, supporting over one hundred thousand people daily as they move across the city. In comparison, Jacksonville’s museums collectively draw 1000 visitors on a busy day. Instead of a forgotten void, the river basin has the potential to become a cultural landscape—a civic armature connecting the diverse neighborhoods on either edge. Located in this combination of industry and landscape, this project appropriates empty spaces, abandoned buildings, and existing bridges as a ground for new cultural/recreational, educational, agricultural and ecological programs.

Typologies of activating locations enable // link // transform A particular locationâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s advantages can vary entirely from other locations, giving way to a certain role that the location can play in relation to the development of the city. In the case of many sites around downtown Jacksonville and along the river, there exists considerable space between active zones. These areas of inactivity emerge as sites with tranformative potential.

enable Condition: The lack of programmatic diversity coupled with privatized properties (former industry/labor) along the river has given way to inaccessibility. Proposal: Attractor activities and landscape interventions such as restructuring corridors and the implementation of riverfront social facilitators. These are conceived as lowimpact sports facilities, roads and walks throughout the section, and landscapes that promote encounter and influx of people.

The best way to create a new relation with such large area is through the creation of specialized action clusters. These clusters of varied performance and function will entice a combinatory effect of urban production. Specifically with sites along the waterfront, ecologies of environment, culture, and politics will be presented on an urban waterfront stage and above all will bring the citizens back to the river through new ways of participation and leisure. These sites then lend themselves to becoming foundations for accretionary, tactical responses. As a means to structure the conditions of the immediate response and function of the sites, We can break down their overall developmental action(s) into 3 categories: enable // link // transform

link Condition: Center of the city has strong cultural and administrative infrastructure. Disconnect between this zone and potential biological and social corridors is caused by road infrastructure. Proposal: Connected by Program and Image: Link East + West and North + South zones through the extension of existing natural and man-made infrastructures. Pedestrian bridges, reforestation processes, observation towers, exemplify the connection of cultural infrastructure to new social and environmental dynamics.

Enabling allows public access to sites that were formerly dead zones. It is typically the acupunctural action that creates the effect of enabling. The site then allows for the ability to access zones of the city in new ways through restructuring corridors and riverfront social facilitators that feed off of existing infrastructures. Linking is the proposal of connecting and expanding zones, creating new zones, through pedestrian paths and bridges as well as landscape infrastructure; connecting cultural zones to new social and environmental areas.

transform Condition: The river has a stigma. Algae blooms, decreasing fish populations, and hazardous waste from industrial sites have led to a lack of interest not only in the riverâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s historic use in terms of recreation and leisure but also what potentials the river has to the future identity of the city.

Transforming is the extent to which the small scale projects can have a collective effect on the image of the city and how people associate with the river. Through essential structural environmental adjustment projects in conjunction with public programs, a suggested reassociation with the river can be initiated.

Proposal: Through essential structural environmental adjustment projects in conjunction with specific public programs, a suggested reassociation with the river can be initiated.

marking Development To excite interest in the St Johns River and shed light on the opportunities latent within the river basin by means of tactical responses, the initial proposal targets specific sites through a series of development points that share a unique vertical presence throughout this area. Though once crisscrossed with rail, boat, and vehicular traffic, the majority of downtown has afforded few locations for the public to observe and experience the city. By affording new perspectives of the city, these points become an open venue for public engagement with the city. Each point is strategically positioned along existing roads and/or infrastructure, to allow people to traverse the city in a new way, understanding a new logic from point to point.

CLOCKWISE STARTING FROM OPPOSITE LEFT: JACKSONVILLE JAGUARS STADIUM | skater from downtown parking garage | jta skyway | jaxport

Ho gan ’s C ree k

rm fo

s ache r be rive

rd ya ip sh ks oc yd r d er

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tactical responses

n addressing the conditions of redevelopment in downtown Jacksonville in regards to the disconnection between the inhabitants of the city and its primary natural resource, sites were chosen along the river as extensions of existing city sanctioned initiatives but more importantly give public access to waterfront areas - areas that have had prolonged private use. The tactical way in which this reconnection can be made is not through trying to change or alter the outcome of the entire site, such as controlling what can or cannot be built on it, but rather responding to the norms of construction projects (i.e. warehouses, office projects) with an active, potentially critical or subversive, intervention that accommodates the particular fabric of the site.

near the stadium and on the river, social functions geared towards the economic success of the football team, such as public sports facilities, could be lightly implemented. With each zone examined, an outlook that incorporates institutions and public function is provided as a means to expose possibilities of future intervention. These additional interventions are only suggestions as to how the first intervention can be better informed as a means for strong urban production. For example, in Zone 8, additional environmental and recreational events - fishing pier, marina, oyster bed - are included in a suggestive plan that supports the function of the proposed observation tower. The events that occur in these clusters of interventions can be inserted in any order over time, supporting the accretionary development strategy as well as the ability for each intervention to carry its own strength relying only on its context.

In the case of these waterfront sites, many contain their own immediate forces to be reckoned with - post-industrial conditions carry the burden of contamination and misuse. Fitting these sites for even minimal use has come at the responsibility of the city, in which Jacksonville has been active. Many sites have been excavated to the necessary level then replenished with top soil giving way for at least a park or minimal structure intervention. The activation of these locations gives way to immediate social potential given their adjacency to the river, though there comes a necessity of crowds in order to get the sites going. Thinking of the saying, â&#x20AC;&#x153;If you build it, they will comeâ&#x20AC;? can be applicable if what being built is in response to a desire, or better yet need of the city.

Each zone also posits an ability to suggest interventions that are primarily infrastructural to city development. Corridors and pathways begin to take ownership of the zones, directing and connecting these zones to others. As these sites develop, their legibility amongst the topographical flatness of Jacksonville becomes hard to distinguish. As a suggested marker for each site, a vertical element that represents the commencement of activity is implemented to understand the breadth and location of active zones in the urban core. The serial nature of the markers simultaneously represents a new order for the city as well as symbolizes the new narrative between Jacksonvillians and the St Johns River.

In the case of each location, their potential is broken into either social, cultural, environmental or economic focus. This categorizing is a conceptual framework for establishing the understood possibilities given the immediate surroundings, but is by no means a permanent label for the site, it simply gives a hierarchy to certain potentials over others. For example, in the case of sites located

contextual landmarks

lighthouse

searchlight

wind turbine

the limits of downtown. The unique characteristics of lightness that both signal towers and searchlights share, one during the day and one at night, show the potential minimal quality for future towers as markers. The temporality of these markers, in the extreme case of not even using material, show the minimum impact with maximum legibility and serial effect that can be achieved in using a certain method.

clock tower

water tower

observation tower

memorial

signal tower

Functional devices represented by a vertical element can be found across the city in many forms and for many uses. In surveying the area within a 15mile radius of downtown (the extents of the city), it was clear that these elements were visible when approaching the city through any of the primary or non-primary arterial roads. Currently, only a single inactive cell phone tower that has been scheduled for removal exists within

coupling tower and base In joining together a literal landmark to its site, each â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;site-markâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; has a unique characteristic of a function at its base. Just as a means to draw in users, discovery is made at the lively active public space below. It is then that the site-marks can have multiple functions, ranging from a monument to a signal tower, but express the qualities of seduction and navigation that encapsulate the unique historic lighthouses of Florida. As sites begin to

develop and organic districts begin to form, the choice can be made to disassemble the towers, just as the Archigram parasitic idea-blimp leaves its host site or remain forever as a monument to the cooperation of the municipality, institution and the public in the rejuvenation and reinvention of the once forgotten wastelands.

historic landmarks With one of the largest collections of lighthouses in the United States, Florida has a rich history in using towers as a means to direct or locate. In the 1820s, the federal government began erecting lighthouses for the protection of ships against the hazards along the Florida coast. In the 1820s, the federal government began erecting lighthouses for the protection of ships against the hazards along the Florida coast. Each was given a definitive color and form for daytime recognition and distinctive light pattern for nighttime identification. 19

The complex building conditions of Floridaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s sandy coasts presented new problems to the engineers responsible for erecting the lighthouses for they found they could not employ the methods and materials of building used in the traditional New England towers. Coming up with a new type of foundation, the engineers developed a series of sandbars around the island, causing the appearing and vanishing of islands over time.

\\ sites and tactics

nmen t

distric t

l tia

enter tai

n ide res

hotel s/resi dentia

0.2

15 m

0.5 mi

0.4 mi

1 mi

zone 01

zone 02

Location // former shipyards

Location // cement plant

focus // economic : initiating exchange

focus // social : providing housing

action // Fish market, bike hub, flexible public space

action // reusing landscapes and infrastructures

Downtownâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s means of economic production originated with shipping and fishing. As the fishing ports maintain their operations at the mouth of the river, most fish caught are transported by auto to the rest of the city. As downtown grassroot markets are on the rise, the introduction of a fish market that extends the use of the river as transportation for fishermen gives additional exposure to local historic industry.

An abundance of space and contrast between built form and landscape exists throughout Commodore Point. The cement silos are unique and legible forms on the extended skyline of Jacksonville, which have the potential to be reused while still maintaining their storage function - from cement and sand to residence and social space. Light implementation of infrastructural landscape elements can help to recreate the use of a fading industrial zone.

id en

tia lt ow er

m co

x ple

spo rts

re s

0.2

0.5 mi

water

0.5

taxi ro

ute

al/ hospit

l tai k re ban sout ed uc ati on

al enti resid

zone 05

zone 06

Location // former wharfs

Location // former shipyards

focus // social : diminishing stigma

focus // environmental : increasing biomass

action // sports and fitness facilities

action // Wetlands restoration project

Based on the adjacencies of the site to the river and the sports complex, the introduction of facilities related to health and well-being along and in the river can begin to break down the conceived notion that the river is unfit for interaction. Programmatic elements such as pools or urban beaches in conjunction with sports and recreation facilities encourage more direct contact with the river.

Rather than typical centralized parks, often containing non-native plant species, a wetlands restoration on this scale gives primacy to the naturally occurring plant species. Turning these sites into zones that begin to restore the habitats that once thrived in these locations shows a commitment to the natural livelihood of the city, adding to a positive image of the cityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s identity while educating and reinforcing the importance of the riverâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s health.

0.2 mi

resid ential

0.3 m

/hot el s

0.1 m i

2 mi

zone 04

Location // vacant parking lot

Location // lot adjacent to bridge

focus // cultural : promoting public space

focus // social: fostering recreation

action // open galleries and public art

action // fishing pier and artificial reef

As an extension of cultural initiatives by the city as well as rigid zoning policy, a single story of artist infrastructure can be implemented to retain the ground-level integrity of cultural representation in the city while allowing for typical development, residential, office, or hotel tower above. Unlike typical tower developments, this enables the site to be accommodating for multiple functions that have the potential to expand into other parts of the city over time and in multiple forms.

As business redevelopment in downtown is on the rise, few amenities exist that respond to local past times. Fishing is a major recreation in greater Jacksonville, and downtown lacks any support. As an extension and stimulus to the Riverwalk, a series of fishing piers and reefs, encourage a new dialog with the river while reusing existing public infrastructure. They also provide subtle, yet varied vantage points of observation into the downtown.

large boat acce ss

5 mi

zone 03

0.5 mi 1.5 mi

small boat ac ces s

0.2 mi

zone 07

zone 08

Location // former shipyards

Location // exchange club island

focus // economic : constructing nodes

focus // environmental : connecting the metropolis

action // extreme sports and geopark

action // observation tower and oyster pavilion park

Jacksonville has maintained popularity of extreme sports as it moves from one trend to another. Cities like Portland have developed urban mountain biking trails, making the reason to come downtown more than a cosmopolitan experience. With the integration of recreational facilities, reusing shipping remnants of the area along with the activity of the program builds upon the character of the formerly active shipyards.

The islandâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s location provides a unique opportunity for connection between urban and suburban while also taking advantage of opportunities of tidal movement between the river and the ocean. This affords itself to a facility that can connect the downtown and outer-city through a means of observing the river at multiple scales and using natural filtration processes to help restore the riverâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s health.

an island: zone 8 The Exchange Club Island was created in 1950 when dredging sand, silt, and other sediments from the river bottom to make way for the Mathews Bridge. Over the past 60 years, the island has naturally developed a large thicket with a diverse range of trees, shrubs, and bushes. Because of the wildlife watching opportunities as well as its position as an urban oasis, the city of Jacksonville has reserved the island as a city park though without any means of access outside a personal craft. In 2012, JAXPORT requested permitting for 13 miles of dredging of the river to make way for larger capacity ships soon to be coming to the east coast. An environmental impact study conducted by the US Army Corps of Engineers focused on the effects caused by dredging project to the salinity levels and its impact on freshwater wetlands, submerged aquatic vegetation, fish, shrimp and groundwater.20 Should the city decide against the dredging, Jacksonville could lose its place as a competitive port, which as of now is the main economic driver of the city. Should the city decide for the dredging, the health and ecosystems of the river could be deeply impacted. The island is located in an area of the river that experiences directional change in flow while maintaining low current speeds in comparison to other areas within downtown. It has the potential to serve as an area for recreational aquatic activity as well as natural river resuscitation and filtration systems. Organizations such as the St John’s Riverkeeper, Jacksonville University, and the Parks and Recreation Department have the opportunity to collaborate in light, yet transformative interventions for the island. In addition to these systems, a marker that creates legibility for the site, as well as an event for ecotourism, can be placed near the island. As an observation tower, this point demarcates the extents of the downtown as well as gives position, an overview of the breadth of the city and its relationship to the river.

‘DEEP ADAPTATION ... IS POSSIBLY THE MOST FRUITFUL POINT OF CONTACT BETWEEN THE THEORY OF COMPLEX SYSTEMS, AND THE PROBLEM OF ARCHITECTURE’ - Christopher ALEXANDER

all images show exchange club island site model. bottom right: oyster bed paviilion, ferry landing and multi use path

XI i TA x ERta ATr

tWe wa

evolving aquatic infrastucture As an extension of existing water taxi routes as well as park infrastructure in the city, the activation of Exchange Club Island acts as a tactical cluster of aquatic projects that can be constructed in any order and inserted at any time. Promoting the use of transportation and social infrastructures through the river acts as a supplement to the ‘Celebrating the River’ initiative by the city but also transforms the image of the river through the specific programmatic developments surrounding recreation.

0’ ground level intimate connection to surroundings

view points

15’ separation

As a node that can take on political, social, and ecological agendas, the active island can become a catalyst to the development of the eastern portion of downtown. In doing so, extensions of the Riverwalk, bike/pedestrian paths and dense vegetation become possible given the representation of a terminal point.

60’ canopy level

110’ above the bridge

160’ river functions

225’ coastal view

overview of close landscape

overall scope of island and adjacent port

dichotomous river sides + view into urban core

movement of and the city’s interaction along the river

view sequence from bridge, direction from downtown

stable ground

marsh

wooded

g. a.

b. i. f.

h. g. f.

a. c.

PEDESTRIAN BRIDGE

MULTI-USE MARINA

HIKING TRAILS | MULTI-USE PATH

OYSTER BEDS | PAVILION

EXCHANGE POINT (FISHING + WATER TAXI)

BEACH ALCOVES

OBSERVATION TOWER

ARTIFICIAL REEF | FISHING PIER

OYSTER BAR

Prevailing Urban Order

Minimal Dissection

Grid Rotations

Internal Connection

Link

Equilateral Hexagon as a tool for extending existing order

Application of sectioning for zones delineated for viewing

Based on the procession of grids from the east

Circulation �low dictated by centralized tower access and peripheral seating arrangements

Water taxi stop from city center and bridge connection to island

7.5’

15’

30’

Lattice Plan

Latitudinal Section

transition The base of the tower acts as a place of transition between hard and soft - from the city to the landscape. The ferry stop, a dense sun-shading lattice structure, is a place for waiting and observation which uses the grids of the city to keep itself positioned amongst the prevailing urban logic while in a remote location. The position of the platform recognizes the changing tides of the river, but also establishes an initial viewpoint before moving through the tower.

Link Water taxi stop from city center and bridge connection to island

Axonometric Void

225’

Axonometric Void

225’

from city center nection to island

Latitudinal Section

itudinal Section

10’ 10’

20’

40’

observing existence through pretense The tower, substantially tall, allows the user to experience the city as an understanding of edge to center within a larger edge to center relationship. The winding of the river and the clarity of the historic relationship between the city and the river gives a clear visual understanding of its order. The tower is not located in service to existing redevelopment or a particular stunning vantage point, but rather positioned as a marker to the breadth of downtown as well as a stimulator to the potential of future development on Commodore Point and beyond.

<< models of Initial marker and base. marker is represented by an elevator core and the base a water taxi platform

evolving futures Sites have the potential to be active and productive urban spaces without maximum implementation. In the case of Exchange Club Island, it is import to recognize the necessary actions to take through the potentials of the site - to begin mending connections between the city and its relationship with the river through environmental and social restructuring that are conditionally influenced. The implementation of these fragments of projects that have the ability to change over time allows for territorial impact through a means of singular small-scale moves. If anything, these projects begin as social, environmental, and economic infrastructures, but allow for development into much more. The observation tower gives legibility to the activation of downtown and to old and new networks - social, environmental, political, and economic. As cities become inherently more complex and their development increasingly contingent on many factors, it is important to think of how tactical actions and growing part-by-part can be implemented to allow for a sustainable and productive urban realm.

IMAGE CREDITS // PAGE (all images produced by author unless otherwise noted) 3

US Population Map. Author. Created using Census Dotmap http://bmander.com/dotmap/index.html#4.00/40.00/-100.00

(top) Aladdin City. “Aladdin City” by Jhw57 - I created this work entirely by myself.. Via Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Aladdin_City. jpg#mediaviewer/File:Aladdin_City.jpg (bottom) Abandoned cul-de-sacs. Daniel Kariko. http://danielkariko.com/index.php?/project/speculation-----2008--present/

(bottom) Isola di Lolando. “Isolda-di-lolando-site-photo-3”. Via Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Isolda-di-lolando-site-photo-3.jpg#mediaviewer/ File:Isolda-di-lolando-site-photo-3.jpg

Plan Voisin. le corbusier - plan voisin - paris, france - 1922. (via new-topographics). http://nocontxt.tumblr.com/post/30616464670/archimodels-c-le-corbusier-plan-voisin

Aerial view of the Jacksonville Terminal and the downtown - Jacksonville, Florida. David Nelson. State Archives of Florida, Florida Memory, http://floridamemory.com/items/show/15969

(top) Housing the remnants of Capitalism. http://dprbcn.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/dharavi-mumbai4.jpg (bottom) L.A. Now Diagram. The Now Institute. http://www.thenowinstitute.org/?page_id=64

Metro Cable. Urban Think Tank. http://www.u-tt.com/projects_Metrocable.html

Metro Cable Montage. Author. Taken from Urban Think Tank. http://www.u-tt.com/projects_Metrocable.html

(top) Barcelona Logistical Activities Zone. Stan Allen Architects (bottom) College Avenue Master Plan. Morphosis Architects

(top) Burma Shave Signs. Steve Loveless. http://www.stevelovelessphotography.com/route-66/arizona/ (bottom) Boston Highway. Kevin Lynch and Donald Appleyard. Aview From the Road.

(top) Instant City. Archigram. http://samfoxschool.wustl.edu/node/2254 (middle) Spacebuster. Raumlabor. http://blog.sias.gr/urban-narratives/75-spacebuster-by-raumlabor-returns-at-ideas-city-festival-in-new-york (bottom) Teatro del Mundo. Aldo Rossi. Antonio Martinelli.

Florida Population Map. Author. Created using Census Dotmap http://bmander.com/dotmap/index.html#4.00/40.00/-100.00

A View of Downtown from St Johns Bridge 1921. http://www.floridamemory.com/items/show/15961

(Left) Vintage Downtown Jacksonville. http://www.visitjacksonville.com/about-us/history/ (middle) Ruhr Region. http://www.dortmund.de/en/about_dortmund/news_en/news.jsp?nid=71409

(Top) Kid on Bike. Ernest Koe. https://www.flickr.com/photos/blinkerfish/page12/ (bottom) Jacksonville skyway reflection. glasskunstler. https://www.flickr.com/photos/53726327@N03/7542757044/in/photolist-6gwRtR-8YZfXt-cRiZdfbSpiwk-hkDci1-9PQNLT-562fGZ-dMh3Ev-c7jrLG-5UhGzj-nfjHjp-521HYQ-cuwATf-5FwbkY-k2Bthv-dJtkxk-562EMh-e4CXfw-52ddDu-dFiDbg-iq7uj9-hJDKHn-5GvM4E4KTNvx-o5YBQg-eMkgRq-ffH6Ho-fiGWbC-bAErWH-hfT2qp-ar31h7-khTSgg-gWakgN-cAoEwy-c9iG1G-guBjpo-9BXvBj-bn2pgP-buXQMD-93KCVE-93HN74-Y8H3B5Gw9uJ-aWdxfk-9wkBHG-gnds4D-cuvh3A-eSHHEZ-f42nCV-4kqb7Q

(Top) Skater from Parking Garage. Chris Jolly. https://www.flickr.com/photos/61902751@N04/5749618652/ (bottom) Foggy Jacksonville Morning. JAXPORT, Meredith Fordham Hughes. https://www.flickr.com/photos/jaxport/13289496615/in/photolist-mfm9kZ6TsnNH-5VVCrR-7R4gk5-dKRwck-dKX1m9-dKWY4j-9kYNVa-5Tpdpd-5cwQ3d-bvo9BM-5Vzbhu-5VzbgG-mfmXop-mfnZgm-4qgVao-67xzZA-jSy8pg-kvhqmk-jKbvWMaEYLks-7xdCpW-5cwQoQ-wz5UP-dKRu5X-dKRt8x

Coastal Lighthouses. Kevin McCarthy.

SELECTED READINGS // 1

Lee, Judy (2014). Reality Check: America’s Biggest Cities Lose People to ... . Retrieved from http://www.aboutdci.com/2014/05/reality-check-americas-biggestcities-lose-people-to-second-tier-cities/

allen, Stan (1999). points + lines: Diagrams and projects for the city. New York, NY. Princeton ARchitectural press.

Castells, Manuel (2000). Grassrooting the Space of Flows, hg. von. James O. Wheeler, Yuko Aoyama und Barney Warf, London: Routledge

Sennett, Richard (2006). THE OPEN CITY - WordPress.com. Retrieved from http://esteticartografias07.files.wordpress.com/2008/07/berlin_richard_ sennett_2006-the_open_city1.pdf

Jacobs, Jane (1989). The Death and Life of Great American Cities. New York: Vintage.

Fishman, Robert (1982). Urban Utopias in the Twentieth Century: Ebenezer Howard, Frank Lloyd Wright, Le Corbusier. Cambridge, Mass.: Mit press.

Publication by School of Planning and Architecture, New Delhi – “Alternative approaches to Master plan.” Retrieved from [http://www.spa.ac.in/Alternativeto-Master-Plan-Apporach.pdf]

The Hindu : Property Plus Coimbatore : Practise urban strategy.(n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.hindu.com/pp/2009/06/21/stories/2009062150150800.htm

Brugmann, Jeb (2009). Welcome to the Urban Revolution. New york, NY: Bloomsbury Press.

Urban-Think Tank - Interdisciplinary Design Studio. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://u-tt.com/projects_Metrocable.html

Mayne, Thom (2011). Combinatory Urbanism: The Complex Behavior of Collective Form. Culver City, CA. Stray Dog Cafe.

Lynch, Kevin (1960). The Image of the City. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.

Arnell, Peter and Bickford, Ted (1985). Aldo Rossi: Buildings and Projects. New York, New York. Rizzoli

Manaugh, Geoff (2009). THe bldgblog book. san francisco, ca.: chronicle books.

Raumlabor (2009). Spacebuster. Retrieved from http://raumlabor.net/spacebuster/.

Arnell, Peter. Bickford, Ted (1991). Aldo Rossi: Buildings and Projects. Ney York, NY.: Rizzoli.

COJ.net - About the Plan - Jacksonville. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.coj.net/departments/better-jacksonville-plan/about-the-plan.aspx

Jacksonville University (2013). St. Johns River gets little respect in Jacksonville ... . Retrieved from http://jacksonville.com/opinion/blog/511316/jacksonville-university/2013-03-06/st-johns-river-gets-little-respect.

McCarthy, Kevin (1990). Florida’s Lighthouses: Guardians of Our Shores. Gainesville, FLA.: University press of florida.

st. johns river alliance (2014). Welcome To The St. Johns River Alliance. Retrieved from http://stjohnsriveralliance.com/.