The Urban

From Left to Right: Ildefons Cerdà, Louis Wirth, Jane Jacobs, Christopher Alexander, Jan Gehl1.

Books out of the Blue

Sometime last summer, during one of my regular walks exploring an urban neighborhood—I've long found that the old advice to "pound the pavement" is the best way to stay actually grounded as an urbanist—I unexpectedly stumbled across an independent book shop2. The weather was blisteringly hot, and being a sucker for a good bookstore, I popped in, as much for the AC as to browse. My brain numbed by the heat, I perused the shelves, duly impressed by the store's selection and curation, but not focused on anything in particular. My detached drift, however, came to a sudden stop as I stumbled across something that made my heart lurch: an entire section labeled simply, "Urbanism."

At first glance, I was ecstatic. Not so long ago, finding books about cities was a thankless task, even in the best shops. If you were lucky, you might find a small selection of books about urban design tucked in at the back of the architecture section, some pieces of urban history peppered in with general or local history, or perhaps some works of urban theory stashed in amongst other, more general works of sociology. To suddenly be faced with a dedicated section stacked with luminaries like Jane Jacobs, Kenneth T. Jackson, Mike Davis, Christopher Alexander, and Richard Sennett seemed almost transcendental3. It felt like urbanism as a field of study—as a discipline all its own—had finally come of age, and was finally starting to get the attention it so richly deserves.

Looking closer, however, my crest began to fall almost as quickly as it had risen. While it was tremendous to see all the authors listed above in one place, they were hardly contemporary: most of their groundbreaking works were at least thirty years old, and many were far older. There were also plenty of newer works as well, of course—most of which deserved (or at least, at a glance, seemed to deserve) their spot here. Seeing them all in one place, however, made it clear that while there were undoubtedly a lot of contemporary books about cities, most here came out of their own specific field, not urbanism. There was a lot of history (for instance, Lizabeth Cohen's excellent work on Ed Logue), biography (Richard Rein's book on William H. Whyte), sociology, social science, a few books of policy, and enough expensive architecture tomes to rival the construction cost of a Santiago Calatrava project4. Many of these works (at least the ones I have personally engaged with) are good or even great. Almost none, however, could truly be said to come from the domain of urbanism itself. Read more...

The Walkway over the Hudson as seen from Poughkeepsie.

A Mark on the Land

No matter where you stand along the waterfront of Poughkeepsie, NY, the colossal lattice of iron and steel is impossible to miss. It commands the landscape, towering over the skyline of this small Hudson River city as it vaults across the water's wide expanse. The gargantuan structure is so large it almost seems to form a wall dividing the mammoth river valley. Even here, some 80 miles (130km) north of New York City, the Hudson River remains startlingly wide. The crossing, however, manages to draw a straight line across the top of the riverine canyon, connecting the cliff tops on one side to the high bluffs on the other. The result is a structure that, from river level, feels preposterously tall—especially given its immense length and scale. Gazing up, the iron edifice feels like the apotheosis of the late-Victorian industrial age. Its eye-beguiling dazzle of trusses seems to stand as a testament to the power of human ingenuity to brute force its way across any chasm, no matter how wide. At the same time, however, for all its bravado, the structure still somehow feels right at home amongst the steep hills and dense forests of the Hudson Valley. Perhaps the crossing simply needed all the dramatic might it could muster to stand up to the ostentatious natural majesty that surrounds it.

This immense mass of girders is—or at least, was—the Poughkeepsie Railroad Bridge, and it stands as a true landmark in every sense of the term. With a length of 1.3 miles (1.2km) and a height reaching 212 feet (65m) above the river below, the structure is an inescapable visual presence. For nearly a century, it was a vital link in America's freight rail network: the only place south of Albany—the state capital some 150 miles (240km) north of New York City—that heavy freight trains could cross the Hudson River. Between its size, its presence, and its import, the bridge has been something of a symbol of Poughkeepsie from the day it opened. The crossing's productive career, however, would come to a sudden and ignominious end in 1974. Left abruptly purposeless, the bridge would sit abandoned for nearly 35 years, left to rust away in the sky like a relic of a long-lost civilization—a titanic elegy to an industrial economy that was no more. Read more...

"Bucolic" usually isn't the first word that comes to mind when thinking of the Bronx. Sure, those of us who know the borough well can easily summon to mind verdant images, but those are usually limited to specific locations, such as the tony neighborhood of Riverdale, or the massive Van Cortlandt or Pelham Bay Parks. The central Bronx, in contrast, would seem to most to be the exact opposite. Like most people's image of the borough as a whole, the central Bronx is incredibly and indelibly urban. And yet it is here, amongst a seemingly endless sea of highways, elevated trains, and densely-packed, slightly-worse-for-wear apartment buildings, that one can find one of the most serenely beautiful new spots in the entire city: Starlight Park.

Of course, Starlight Park isn't actually all that new: the first section of the rehabbed rounds opened a full ten years ago, in 2013. The park, however, is still just as astonishing now as it was the day it opened, a stunning oasis smack dab in the middle of somewhere that rarely sees such dramatic investments in the public realm. And yet, for all its grandeur, the existing Starlight Park was only ever supposed to be the first phase of a larger project, one which would wind up ultimately taking the better part of a decade to come to fruition. Just recently, however, in May of 2023, Starlight Park was finally completed, opening a new extension to the far shore of the Bronx River. This not only added new acreage and amenities, but worked to connect the park to more neighborhoods in more ways, most dramatically by helping to fashion a new, multipurpose green corridor through the heart of the urban Bronx. As anyone who works with cities will tell you, urban transformation can be a tricky thing to do right. Starlight Park and its new extension, however, demonstrate just what can be accomplished when cities invest in their public realm, especially in the neighborhoods—and for the people—that need it the most. Read more...

The following is an excerpt from the Master's thesis, The Washington Metro and the Fall and Rise of American Urbanity, presented and © 2014. It is part of Chapter 4: Stolzenbach, Jacobs, JFK, and the (Re)Emergence of American Urbanity. Enjoy!

“ No urban critic was more effective than Jane Jacobs. Her book ... became an immediate bestseller. ... Jacob's manifesto found a sympathetic audience in many urban residents at a key time in American history. ”

Rosalyn Deutsche, an art historian, critic, and urbanist, has written at length on the problematic nature of public art and public space. All too often, in Deutsche's opinion, art and space are neutered of their individual discursive qualities by existing power structures, a desire to serve the lowest common denominator, or both. For her, if space, art, or to extend her work to the case in hand, infrastructure, is to be truly democratic, truly public, it must embody ongoing contestation. Unlike Habermas, Deutsche has no preconceptions of a singular popular opinion that can be reached through rational dialogue. The ideas at hand are too powerful, the splits in opinion too great, and the balance of power too unequal for that ever to be the case. To this point, the story of Metro has encompassed a few contestations: Should transportation planning work to (re)concentrate urban life, or should it push towards dispersal? Is the automobile the way of the future, or does rail still have a role to play? What is the role of the 'expert' vis-à-vis the role of the public at large? What is the role of the government? These issues were highly contested by planners, politicians, and academics. But in becoming reality, they would by necessity affect far more than the select few in positions of relative power^[2]. Read more...

“ Frustratingly, it can sometimes seem that, to paraphrase a famous decision of Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart, urbanity is like pornography: we can't define it, but we know it when we see it. ”

Urban environments are hot right now in America. From coast to coast, traditional urban cores are being filled—not only by young professionals, but also by all manners of families, individuals, and households. For the first time in over fifty years, as the 2010 census dramatically demonstrated, cities grew faster than their suburbs. Neighborhoods which for more than a generation could not buy the attention of developers are now sprouting newly constructed luxury condominiums, high-value office space, and uncountable numbers of boutique retailers and eateries. Famous so-called "starchitects," people with names like Gehry, Calatrava, and Piano, tour the world, selling and sharing their perceived abilities to transform moribund environments. Urban property values are skyrocketing, and concerns over gentrification—and its concomitant displacement of the less well-off—dominate the political discourse of many a large city. Indeed, in the leading cities of this urban renaissance—places like Boston, New York, and San Francisco—demand is driving prices so high there is real concern that soon, none but the very wealthy will be able to afford most of the urban environment.^[1] Read more...

Allow me, for a moment, to take the role of a philosophy professor and ask a confoundingly difficult, yet simple-seeming question: what is a city?

Everyone has some conception of what a city is—from the rural farmer who has never left her home county, to the cosmopolitan world traveler who hops from place to place each and every day; and from residents of the world's most technologically advanced countries to those who make their homes in the furthest reaches of the developing world. In each of us, the word "city" itself conjures strong but wildly divergent images. Many visions can be embodied in it: skyscrapers and apartment houses as well as smoke belching factories and dirty hovels; the most complex corporations and cultural institutions along with small social circles of but a few friends; dark political machines and peaceful communes. All of these images, and everything else not only in-between but encompassing an almost infinite number of concepts, structures, and visions, are encompassed in the word city. Common intuition leads us to believe that we are all referring to the same concept or concepts, but at times the sheer diversity of experience and insight can make us question even such a basic assumption. To say the very least, attempting to unify these different views into a coherent definition and understanding is hardly a trivial task. Read more...