{"id":18,"date":"2011-06-19T21:09:50","date_gmt":"2011-06-19T21:09:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/interculturalurbanism.wordpress.com\/?p=18"},"modified":"2013-06-28T10:17:21","modified_gmt":"2013-06-28T16:17:21","slug":"culturing-community-in-urban-design","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/?p=18","title":{"rendered":"Culturing Community in Urban Design"},"content":{"rendered":"

(A version of the following appeared in The Denver Post<\/a><\/em>, co-authored\u00a0with Kyle Cascioli, February 7, 2011).<\/p>\n

Former mayor Federico Pe\u00f1a once implored Denverites to \u201cImagine a Great City.\u201d\u00a0 The Denver Post<\/em> is regularly filled with opinions about how we might build something more akin to a \u201cGood City.\u201d\u00a0 The concept of Good City was first introduced in the 1960\u2019s by the philosopher Lawrence Haworth.\u00a0 Haworth believed that the Good City must offer its\"\"<\/a> citizens economic opportunity as well as the means to build strong community.\u00a0 He noted that these two \u201cingredients\u201d are often in conflict, so they need to be carefully balanced. \u00a0Today the Good City is also conceptualized as one that is environmentally sustainable.<\/p>\n

In pursuing Good City visions planners and developers have generally looked to the outside for inspiration and best practices. They\u2019ve looked to other cities (like Portland, Oregon) for guidance in creating mixed use, walkable, and tightly-knit communities.\u00a0 \u00a0Such communities are exemplified locally by Belmar<\/a>, Lowry<\/a>, and Stapleton<\/a>.\u00a0 They\u2019ve also looked to\u00a0 foreign architects (like Daniel Libeskind and Santiago Calatrava) for civic building designs (Denver Art Museum<\/a>, Denver International Airport<\/a>) that signal Denver\u2019s economic viability and world city ambitions.<\/p>\n

Largely ignored in the Good City dialogue are the cultural values that shape how ethnically-diverse groups respond to and use the urban built environment. \u00a0Given the increasing ethnic diversity of Denver and other American cities we believe that urban sustainability should be broadly viewed in cultural as well as economic and environmental terms.\u00a0\u00a0 In contrast to the typical \u201coutside in\u201d\u00a0 approach to urban redevelopment described above, we favor an \u201cinside out\u201d approach that starts with locality\u2014local culture and history, local community needs and aspirations\u2014in planning for vibrant and sustainable urban communities.\u00a0\u00a0 We thus view real estate development as “Contemporary Urban Anthropology<\/a>” (CUA).<\/p>\n

Building community in a way that is sensitive to social and cultural difference is a central value of New Urbanist approaches to urban redevelopment. \u00a0However, this goal is rarely achieved in practice.\u00a0 New Urbanist developments often don\u2019t provide the variety of affordable housing that would allow even minimal social mixing, much less the kinds of architecture and other built spaces (e.g., parks and plazas) that appeal to the cultural tastes of different potential user populations.\u00a0 \u00a0The problem is amplified by the fact that land prices rise exponentially the closer a parcel is located to the urban core, where public civic space is most needed. \u00a0\u00a0As Haworth understood, the project developer\u2019s need for economic\u00a0 profitability can easily impede efforts to build community.<\/p>\n

Balancing opportunity and community is central to the inside out approach of Contemporary Urban Anthropology.\u00a0 CUA has proven its value when applied in other American cities.\u00a0 In Houston, for example, the real estate profession\u2019s traditional \u201cHighest & Best Use\u201d (HBU) approach to development failed to produce a successful anchor tenant for a retail center called Westchase Plaza, located in one of the city\u2019s most ethnically diverse trade areas. \u00a0HBU analysis\u00a0seeks to find a balance between plans that are legally permissible, physically possible, financially feasible, and maximally productive\u2026where productivity is measured as profitability.\u00a0\u00a0 Alternatively,\u00a0the CUA approach<\/a> added \u201cculturally sustainable\u201d to the HBU formula.\u00a0 It specified that the best anchor tenant for Westchase Plaza would not be one of the more typical retailers or office users but rather a Hispanic cosmetology school.\u00a0 The school has not only served the local population\u2019s need for jobs training but has nicely integrated into the wider community\u2019s diverse ethnic fabric.<\/p>\n

Effective, culturally-sensitive urban planning will depend on changes in the way that we educate real estate professionals.\u00a0 Not much has been written in the Post<\/em> about the next generation of planners, developers, and contractors who would accomplish this work. We believe that higher education can and should be the catalyst for imagining new ways of thinking about real estate redevelopment, as well as the infill architecture and other built space that might better allow the users of redeveloped real estate to create distinctive identities for themselves. The academic studies of real estate and anthropology are bound by a common interest in the relationship between people and their built environment.\u00a0 We need better ways to integrate the two.\u00a0 Students must learn to view urban design and development as both an economic challenge and a cultural opportunity.\u00a0\u00a0 They must learn that where designed<\/em> space can be culturally transformed by its users into lived<\/em> place the prospects for sustainability are improved.\u00a0 More and better collaboration across established academic disciplines promises to deliver ideas and plans that better serve the cause of building viable, sustainable, and good cities.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(A version of the following appeared in The Denver Post, co-authored\u00a0with Kyle Cascioli, February 7, 2011). Former mayor Federico Pe\u00f1a once implored Denverites to \u201cImagine a Great City.\u201d\u00a0 The Denver Post is regularly filled with opinions about how we might […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[6,8,18,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-denver-urbanism","category-general","category-intercultural-city","category-op-eds"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1H2bI-i","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2866,"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18\/revisions\/2866"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}