collage

Judging from the last Venice Biennale, I can saay it is either a mass of unanalyzed data or a lot of appearnce, nice desin and no content. Did we really need the genius of Richard Burdet and friends (some of whom have been or are my teachers) to tell us that living conditions in Mumbay or Mexico city are that dramatic and demand our attention?

I have always thought that architecture and urbanism represent that fringe in what we generally label "arts" for the commitment to finding a practical solution, or even merely "a solution". Something I haven't really seen in this last Biennale. Not even in the realm of theoretical abstractions, apart from Vema, the city planning exercise by Purini which starts and ends as a purely theoretical exercise.

As a joke, I have often said that the essence of contemporary urbanism is Photoshop. I am beginning to believe it now.

commuting

smog

put down that bloody pencil and start thinking and not drawing!

-that's about it.

Noisy crowds and quiet solitude - both extremes.

Also, I like the description of the urban experience as "oceanic".

take, give, belong...

architecture +

time
multiplicity of scales
multiplicity of actors

Oh Lonedevil,

I love your conclusion: "The essence of contemporary urbanism is photoshop".. Story of my life. Can I quote that? Make a t-shirt out of it? Put it on a building?

demo(no)cracy

oh, wait - sorry, I misspelled that. It was supposed to be l-a-n-d-s-c-a-p-e. . .

politics

i suspect that the [i]city[i/] is the essence of urbanism

dog shit

Nice timing.

I was rereading dear old Jane Jacobs just this afternoon. According to her, "One principle emerges ... ubiquitously. This ... is the need of cities for a most intricate and close-grained DIVERSITY of uses that give each other constant support, both economically and socially."

How to design & plan for urban diversity, according to JJ:

1. mix primary uses (mulitple functions, all times of day/night)
2. deploy small blocks/ many streets (connections)
3. include both new and older construction (range of affordability)
4. provide enough density of people to support the area (both housing & businesses)

This still seems to stand up after nearly a half-century. I guess that qualifies as "essence"...

Has anyone read economics of cities or any of her later works?

I would say the aspect of Death and Life that least holds true today is that she was describing solutions for more of an early capitalist economy rather than our big-business gearing of today (not that it didn't exist then, but was certainly less prevalent).

Anyway, just wondering if this gets her attention later on.



Actually, citizen, in no way finding fault with your use of the list, but it brings up what I think is the danger of her as well. That is, the results of her (extensive yet specific) empirical observations typically result in lists that (through no fault of Jane's) are very easily cherry picked and used as a punchlist, without ever investigating the depth of the situation it is being applied to. Which she would be very much against.

at least, that is how i've seen it applied in my short time on this earth.

Yes, Heavy, that's the usual story with theories for complex urban problems. The granddaddy of all such cherry-picking victims is Ebenezer Howard's program for the Garden City system.

An irony of Jacobs is that, in my view, she was almost as guilty as the planners she excoriated of prescribing a kind of simplified "how to" program for fixing cities. Granted, hers was far more nuanced and complex, but she still was saying "here, if you'll just do this, this, and this" in your city, all will be well.

Oh, and I've never made it beyond her "Death and Life," I'm sorry to report. I'd enjoy reading what else she was up to, but my to-read list is so long already...

P.S. Are you at Miami? My old boss and his wife graduated from there...