I came across this video lecture from TED on urban sprawl the other day and thought it’d be worth sharing in regards to today’s planned topic of discussion. James Howard Kunstler is an outspoken opponent to urban sprawl who blames (North) American city planning since the Second World War as concentrating solely on the direct function of the building (For example: a bank only needs 4 walls, a roof and a vault to operate, with all else being optional expenses) and ignoring what it ought to contribute to public space on the outside. Without a sense of place, people have fled the city for a confusing mix of rural and urban living (suburbia) which captures the benefits of neither.
Moving slightly from the video itself, I think the only establishments nowadays that have tried (albeit poorly) to instil a sense of public space are coffee shops. People don’t necessarily go to the place for the beverage, but for the atmosphere in the lounge or on the patio. However these businesses with their pseudo-public spaces can only go so far. As for the downtowns of Windsor and Detroit, they are intimidating and unwelcoming and ought to improve if they ever hope for revitalization. While there are places such as Windsor’s waterfront and Detroit’s Campus Martius Park that offer some hope, I don’t think they welcome or engage citizens to the degree they ought to. The GreenLink border proposal tries to address this lack of public space in the west end, but I fear it could develop into an all ‘Green’ and no ‘Link’ reality.
I also noticed Kunstler and Solnit have differentiating views on the role of nature within cities. Solnit believes urban gardening and ‘wilderness patches’ are practical and useful to envision a new role for post-industrial metropolises while Kunstler elaborates how greenery should be used in a more cosmetic notion to achieve a sense of place which will revitalize a shrinking city over time. I found it very interesting to contrast.
Thanks Chris for this excellent post. It is well timed in relation to Rebecca Solnit's article, though I think they're both on the same page in terms of their feelings toward the post-apocalyptic scenarios we find in many urban areas in North America. I think Solnit and many other writers have been looking at Detroit as a case study as it was one of the first cities to self-destruct due to the automobile and the forms of urban planning that followed in its wake. More positively, however, there is a lot of self-organization happening in Detroit. It is doubtful that it will ever look like it did in 1920, but many Detroiters are envisioning urbanism in a new way in terms of utilizing vacant space in novel ways, much of it agricultural. I'm not sure if Kunstler's demonstration of healthy public space in the form of Parisian cafes is really going to be useful in terms of what we're facing now in North America. Whenever we attempt to do cafe culture in NA, it often comes off as 'pseudo' public space. We're notoriously bad at making places like the Distillery district in Toronto (for example) which is public only to the extent that you need to drop a lot of cash to participate in that public. I do think the Windsor waterfront is a fairly good example of successful public space; it certainly has its flaws, though it draws people in at least partly due to its proximity to Wyandotte Street east, which has a high population of people from cultures that value public space.
ReplyDeleteAnyhow, this video is timely. Thanks for uploading it.
I really appreciated what Kunstler had to say about using architecture which draws people in, and unites the street and atmosphere with the building. It drives my crazy to see beautiful buildings go to waist, particularly in Windsor. Windsor has been infamous for tearing old buildings down and replacing them with cold beige stucco'ed pseudo-creative projects. There was a BMO Bank on the corner of Ottawa and Walker which was red brick and cement. It must have been built around 1912, and had a wonderfully colonial and victorian design to it. They tore it down several months ago and replaced it with cement parking spaces. This was done so at a store owners desire for more shop visibility. As stated in the Windsor Star, "He wants it demolished to provide more visibility for the shopping plaza he owns behind the bank, and to provide more parking."(Dave Battagello, Windsor Star
ReplyDeletePublished: Friday, June 13, 2008)
Battagello also comments how the city has been to liberal with demolition permits.
I think Kunstler did not touch upon the destruction of well-designed buildings, but the construction of new, better ones, with similar design aspects of the old architecture. Windsor, needs to follow his advice, desperatly, as well as the U.S.
I was in Nevada last April, and noticed what appeared to be a high security penetentary, then realized it was a gradeschool... Kunstler touches upon the same building in his lecture. Why are important buildings looking like cold bastiles of human punishment?
Lindsay Whalen