Urban Planning

A R T 1 0 0

U n d e r s t a n d i n g V i s u a l C u l t u r e

agenda 3.23.15

the origins of modern planning

Frederick Law Olmsted in NY and Chicago

Haussmann in Paris

a case study of modern planning: NYC

two visions of the city

the New Urbanism

"the smart code"

Central Park, Frederick Law OLMSTED and Calvert VAUX, 1858, completed 1873

aerial photograph, Manhattan, NYC

Chicago Parks

The west park system of Chicago was established in 1869.

Douglas, Garfield, and Humboldt parks and their connecting

boulevards were laid out by architect William LeBaron

Jenney in 1871.

At Garfield, originally known as Central Park, Jenney’s plan

was built-out slowly over the next three decades:

• east lagoon,

• suspension bridge

• small conservatory

• Victorian bandstand

• horse racing track

William LeBaron JENNEY, Garfield Park Suspension Bridge

William LeBaron JENNEY, Humboldt Park, 1870-1906

William LeBaron JENNEY, Humboldt Park, 1870-1906

Paris

Paris,

before

urban

planning

Charles MARVILLE,

Rue des Trois Canettes

1865-8

"medieval" Paris

streets are:

• narrow and winding

• doesn't permit traffic

• doesn't permit troop movement

• easily barricaded

• paved with cobblestones

• open sewer

• unsanitary

• unhealthy

• poor inhabitants not necessarily friendly to Napoleon III

Unidentified photographer

[Barricades during the Paris Commune]

1871 © Det Kongelige Bibliotek

Delacroix, Liberty Leading the People, 1830

asphalt

most roads today are surfaced with asphalt (byproduct of

crude oil processing). leftovers are made into asphalt

cement for pavement.

1824 asphalt block first used on the Champs-Élysées in

Paris.

modern road asphalt used in Battery Park and on Fifth

Avenue in New York City in 1872 and on Pennsylvania

Avenue, Washington D.C., in 1877.

Charles Marville

In 1862 Marville became the official photographer for the city

of Paris.

His job: to document the city, both the quarters marked for

destruction and the grand boulevards that replaced them.

Although his charge was to show that the existing urban

fabric was "not worth saving," many drew the opposite

conclusion from the archive he created.

The entire body of his work burned in the destruction of the

Hôtel de Ville during the Commune. Fortunately Marville had

carefully stored his negatives and was able to replace the

prints.

from Le Vieux Paris by Louis Blanc in Paris-guide, par

les principaux écrivains et artistes de la France,

Librairie Internationale, 1867.

“The time has come to clean up the insalubrious streets

and create more wide-open spaces! The time has come to

let the sun stream into the shady districts, to give Paris the

lungs to breathe as it should; not for reasons of trend or

fashion, but for the sake of hygiene and progress! Yet

wherever the interests of public health, wherever the

inevitable growth of civilization do not require Parisian

dignitaries to display their relentless determination, mercy

for the old streets of Paris! Mercy for the visible vestiges of

the past that the present is so intent on destroying in every

way...! Mercy! If only for a few warts and stains beloved of

Montaigne!”

Under Napoleon III

• Haussmann undertook what many consider the first modern

urban works project, demolishing many existing neighborhoods

to make way for grand boulevards and parks.

• He installed a sewer system.

• Gas lighting was placed in major public places.

• He hired photographers to document the medieval streets he

was plowing under.

Camille PISSARRO, Boulevard Montmartre, 1897, 29.1 × 36.5 in

Camille Pissarro, Avenue de L’Opera, 1898

Gustave CAILLEBOTTE, Traffic Island in the Boulevard Haussmann

Charles Garnier, Paris Opera, built from 1860 to 1875

Marville, L’Avenue de l’Opera

razing the Butte des Moulins during

construction of the Paris Opera house

Vincent VAN GOGH, Outskirts of Paris near Montmartre, 1886

Urban planning, NY style

“I’d like to see the planner who can remove

a ghetto without displacing some people,

just like I’d like to see the chef who can

make an omelette without breaking some

eggs.”

—Robert Moses, New York City planner

and nemesis of Jane Jacobs

“creative destruction”Joseph Schumpeter

Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (1942)

Robert

Moses,

with the

map of

the Five

Boroughs

of New York

City

behind him

Robert Moses (1888-1981)

a variety of unelected roles in New York State and New

York City

built parkways, beaches and bridges in and around New

York in the 1930s, using New Deal funds

postwar period, attention turned to expressways; he built a

number of them but failed to build the Lower Manhattan

Expressway

Moses projects

parkways: Northern State, Southern State, Wantaugh

Parkway, Meadowbrook Parkway

beaches: Jones Beach

pools: throughout the five boroughs

bridges: Triborough Bridge, Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel,

Throgs Neck, the Bronx-Whitestone, the Henry Hudson,

and the Verrazano–Narrows bridges.

expressways: I-278 (the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway

and Staten Island Expressway), Cross-Bronx Expressway,

developed Shea Stadium, Lincoln Center, and contributed

to the United Nations headquarters.

Jones Beach seen from Wantaugh Parkway

“When I first looked at this

project, I thought, "How the hell

are we going to get across

here?" It was probably one of

the most challenging highway

projects that had been

constructed, or even

conceived, up until that time. I

dare say that only a man like

Mr. Moses would have the

audacity to believe that one

could push (the expressway)

from one end of the Bronx to

the other.“

—Ernest Clark, design team

The "Cross Bronx"

Expressway

Moses vs. Jacobs

The Cross-Bronx Expressway, today

The Death and Life of

Great American Cities

(1961)Has become a touchstone for planners and architects associated

with the New Urbanism.

Jacobs, p. 8

“Specifically, in the case of planning for cities, it is clear

that a large number of good and earnest people do care

deeply about building and renewing. Despite some

corruption, and considerable greed for the other man's

vineyard, the intentions going into the messes we make

are, on the whole, exemplary.”

Jacobs, p. 8

“Planners, architects of city design, and those they have led along with them in their beliefs are not consciously disdainful of the importance of knowing how things work. On the contrary, they have gone to great pains to learn what the saints and sages of modern orthodox planning have said about how cities ought to work and what ought to be good for people and businesses in them. They take this with such devotion that when contradictory reality intrudes, threatening to shatter their dearly won learning, they must shrug reality aside.”

Her proposal:

Let’s study healthy streets and blocks and

develop a set of principles they share in

common.

We can use those principles to guide new

development.

“Smart Code,”

Duany Plater-

Zyberk,

originally

released 2003

“Smart Code” v. 9.2

Consider the most-loved towns of North America. They were

either carefully planned, or they evolved as compact, mixed

use places because of their geography and the limits of the

transportation and economics of their time. However, over

the past sixty years, places have evolved in a completely

different pattern. They have spread loosely along highways

and haphazardly across the country- side, enabled by the

widespread ownership of automobiles, by cheap petroleum

and cheap land, and by generalized wealth.

Such patterns are enabled by zoning codes that separate

dwellings from work- places, shops, and schools. These

codes include design standards that favor the automobile

over the pedestrian, and are unable to resist the

homogenizing effects of globalization.

These practices have produced banal housing subdivisions,

business parks, strip shopping, big box stores, enormous

parking lots, and sadly gutted downtowns. They have caused

the proliferation of drive-by eateries and billboards. They

have made walking or cycling dangerous or unpleasant.

They have made children, the elderly, and the poor utterly

dependent on those who can drive, even for ordinary daily

needs. They have caused the simultaneous destruction of

both towns and open space -- the 20th century phenomenon

known as sprawl.

The form of our built environment needs a 21st century

correction. But in most places it is actually illegal to build in a

traditional neighborhood pattern. The existing codes prevent

it. In most places people do not have a choice between

sprawl and traditional urbanism. Codes favor sprawl and

isolated residential sub- divisions. It is not a level playing

field.

The SmartCode was created to deal with this problem at the point of decisive impact -- the intersection of law and design. It is a form-based code, meaning it envisions and encourages a certain physical outcome --the form of the region, community, block, and/or building. Form-based codes are fundamentally different from conventional codes that are based primarily on use and statistics -- none of which envision or require any particular physical outcome.

The SmartCode is a tool that guides the form of the built environment in order to create and protect development patterns that are compact, walkable, and mixed use. These traditional neighborhood patterns tend to be stimulating, safe, and ecologically sustainable. The SmartCode requires a mix of uses within walking distance of dwellings, so residents aren’t forced to drive everywhere. It supports a connected network to relieve traffic congestion. At the same time, it preserves open lands, as it operates at the scale of the region as well as the community.

A primary task of all urban architecture and

landscape design is the physical definition of

streets and public spaces as places of shared use.

Individual architectural projects should be

seamlessly linked to their surroundings. This issue

transcends style.

(see Vincent Scully, “The Death of the Street”)

Skidmore, Owings and Merrill

(SOM)

Lever House

1951-2

view down Park Avenue, showing the relationship between the older buildings

and the street

New York Racquet and Tennis Club, 370 Park Avenue

in the lobby of the Seagram’s Building, looking across to the Racquet Club

Mies van der Rohe, with interiors

by Philip Johnson

Seagram Building

375 Park Avenue

1954-8

The revitalization of urban places depends

on safety and security. The design of streets and buildings

should reinforce safe environments, but not at the expense

of accessibility and openness.

In the contemporary metropolis, development

must adequately accommodate automobiles. It

should do so in ways that respect the pedestrian and the

form of public space.

NYC bike path

reconfigured intersection, NYC

“Curbana” under construction, June 2014

Streets and squares should be safe, comfortable, and

interesting to the pedestrian. Properly configured, they

encourage walking and enable neighbors to know each other

and protect their communities.

Union Square, NYC

Architecture and landscape design should

grow from local climate, topography, history,

and building practice.

Guggenheim Museum, NYC, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright

Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao, Spain, designed by Frank Gehry

Civic buildings and public gathering places

require important sites to reinforce community

identity and the culture of democracy. They

deserve distinctive form, because their role is

different from that of other buildings and places that

constitute the fabric of the city.

All buildings should provide their inhabitants

with a clear sense of location, weather and time.

Natural methods of heating and cooling can be

more resource-efficient than mechanical systems.

Preservation and renewal of historic buildings,

districts, and landscapes affirm the continuity and evolution

of urban society.

Seaside, FL 1985

In 1978 after Robert Davis inherited an 80 acre plot of land in

the Florida Panhandle. Robert and his wife Daryl set out to build

a “livable” resort town in the “Redneck Riviera” and create a

haven for those who missed the communities that were

developed when cars were not the dominant form of

transportation.

Andrés Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, a husband and wife

team from the prestigious architectural firm Arquitectonica.

(They later formed their own firm, DPZ.) The four of them, along

with European classicist and town planner Léon Krier, set out to

design the kind of place that had been overlooked in

contemporary American town planning. The kind of community

we all wish we could be from.

Seaside, Florida, 1982, Robert Davis, Andres Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk

Note the golfcart.

The Truman Show (1998),

dir. Peter Weir

Was filmed in Seaside, Florida,

which the director felt perfectly

expressed the set of reality

television show.

http://inframanage.com/urbanization-1950-2050-economist-magazine-interactive-

timeline-infrastructure-management-perspective/