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Tag planning

Hyde Park Chicago Before Zoning

photo by flickr user mandus I recently came across a great blog, Hyde Park Urbanist, which focuses on urbanism in the Hyde Park neighborhood of Chicago. Hyde Park is located along Lake Michigan on the South Side and is the home of The University of Chicago as well as Frank LLoyd Wright’s famous Robie House and Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry. A recent article discusses how the area originally grew unhampered by zoning, with streets lined with businesses and shops. Then, urban renewal schemes disrupted the natural patterns of living. Presently, planners are seeing the folly of past ambitions. Unfortunately, we have to keep our eyes on the planners as they test out newfangled schemes for future generations to untangle. Hyde Park Urbanist – Before Zoning: this post is about what happened before zoning began to shape Hyde Park’s urban landscape. “urban renewal”, when the commercial heart of Hyde Park was suddenly ripped out. Planning in the late 1950s was primarily about separating residential, commercial and industrial districts. A couple generations later, most planners believe that residential and commercial uses can be combined along one block. That’s a lesson in itself. Half of today’s planning notions will look terribly wrong 50 years from today; we just don’t know which half. The commercial building patterns that Rossi describes occurred before zoning became mildly effective in the late 1920s. Those patterns can be seen as natural, in the sense that they were a response to the marketplace rather than the result of government fiat. (emphasis mine) I recommend checking out the Hyde Park Urbanist’s blog, especially for you Chicagoans…

Journalists and Cities

Here’s a link to an interesting article by Scott Page at Planetizen called A Journalistic View of Cities Scott discusses how mainstream journalists are poorly equipped to write appropriately on urban issues aside from than architecture. I was reading the New York Times Magazine special architecture issue a few weeks ago when something jumped out at me. On the intro page to the issue of the “Mega-Megalopolis” one of the by-line says “How does an architect plan for a city with no history? Or a city that just keeps growing?” Interesting questions particularly given the fact that to charge architects with the task of planning our cities is affording too much power to a profession that simply doesn’t have it. Nor do planners for that matter. I’ve made it no secret in this blog that cities are the product of thousands of decisions made by individuals, organizations, leaders, businesses among others. We have the opportunity to guide some of those decisions and make more informed choices but the days of Hausmann and Napoleon who transformed Paris in the span of a few decades are coming to a close. Yes, yes, I know that China and a handful of other places are building cities ridiculously fast today and I also know that starchitects are generally charged with the task of creating large master plans to guide this government-sponsored development. I think we also know how unique a situation that is. Architects are flocking to build in China and Dubai precisely because of this unique opportunity. Where else can you feel like Robert Moses or Albert Speer, able to shape a city in a single bound? But what struck me most about the architecture issue is that the public’s perspective on cities today is written primarily by architecture critics. (emphasis mine) What’s […]

Socialist Cities

So, you think the planners in your area are taking something a little too far? Be glad you aren’t in Venezuela… I wish I could link to the article by Michael Mehaffy in The Urban Land Institute’s May edition of Urban Land titled “Venezuela’s New Socialist Cities”, but ULI doesn’t provide the online edition to non-members. However, I have been able to find some related articles online, which I can share with you. Development of Caminos de Los Indios, the first of five “Socialist Cities” has begun south of Caracas. In his 2007 inaugural speech, Hugo Chavez said, “We need to a system of cities based on federations, federal regions. We need to build communal cities, Socialist Cities.” “Economic power needs to be transfered to these local bodies (“councils of popular power”) – so that we can work toward the communal and social state and move away from capitalism.” The concept is tauted by the government as a way of empowering locals and creating sustainable places for the 1/2 million residents. In Nov 17, 2007’s Washington Post, Ramón Carrizales, Venezuela’s housing minister is quoted “A city that’s self-sustainable, that respects the environment, that uses clean technologies, that is mostly for use by the people, with lots of walking paths, parks, sports areas, museums and schools within walking distance.” However, many environmentalists are appalled, since these cities will be build in the wilderness, requiring roads and infrastructure to these newly deforested locations. Not only that, many rural residents will be forced to resettle into the “Socialist Cities.” The history of these sort of projects are dismal. From the Washington Post article Chávez’s ‘Socialist City’ Rises: “The majority of socialist cities that were built in socialist countries failed,” said Maria Josefina Weitz, an urban planner in Caracas. “When you create something by […]

Government Planning Day

The Antiplanner discusses how well-intentioned agencies become wasteful government-planning bureaucracies. The mal-investment in our socialist highway system and the resulting congestion, pollution, disrepair, and sprawl come to mind. Using smart growth, modern day planners are trying to correct the lack of foresight of the planners and politicians of past generations who brought us the sprawl and congestion in the first place. However, with the lack of signals the market give us, it took several generations to recognize we had been going the wrong direction. We won’t know for another generation or two which wrong road modern planners are sending us down. Even if it’s unlikely we can privatize everything overnight, by introducing market solutions to our highway/transit systems, we can begin to make better decisions for the long run. Politicians need to welcome the ideas of tolling and privatization and stop pandering to the automobile-reliant voters.

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