{"id":1926,"date":"2012-09-15T12:38:26","date_gmt":"2012-09-15T18:38:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/?p=1926"},"modified":"2012-09-15T13:37:06","modified_gmt":"2012-09-15T19:37:06","slug":"has-the-concept-of-urbanism-lost-its-mojo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/?p=1926","title":{"rendered":"Has the Concept of “Urbanism” Lost its Mojo?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Kaid Benfield thinks so (see here<\/a> and again here<\/a>).\u00a0 He believes the word \u201curbanism\u201d is overused and, consequently, stifling creative thought about cities and their planning. \u00a0He thus joins vocabulary policemen like Thomas Frank who\u2019d like to purge other words\u2014specifically, \u201cvibrant<\/a>\u201d\u2014from \u00a0the planning lexicon.\u00a0 Benfield says:<\/p>\n

\u2026as a lover of words and language, I am always thinking about their meaning and best use. And I now believe it may be time to send “urbanism” to the same literary retirement as “vibrant.”\u00a0 \u2026My first problem with urbanism is that in some circles it has taken on the air of a cult, providing a verbal badge of identification. The word carries an assumption not just that adherents love and promote cities but also subscribe to a growing code of written and unwritten precepts and rules about how our built environment should be organized \u2013 starting but not ending with density, gridded streets, mixed uses, priority to pedestrians rather than drivers, and so on. \u2026Just as the principles of smart growth have gotten stale, so have the overlapping principles of urbanism. Overly familiar vocabulary can lead to overly familiar thinking.<\/em><\/p>\n

But perhaps an even bigger problem with \u201curbanism\u201d is that the word is ridiculously overused. \u2026 It comes in a bewildering variety of forms \u2013 old, new, sustainable, tactical, landscape, pop-up, accidental, adaptive, emergent, Latino, recombinant, magical, integral, green, military, “true,” everyday, postmodern, guerilla, mobile, even an oxymoronic\u00a0 \u201cagrarian” strain, and more. Various versions of the label are used to justify everything from illegally spray-painting public property to development in places that no sensible person would honestly consider \u201curban\u201d unless they have drunk gallons of metaphorical Kool-Aid. I could define urbanism in my own way and probably be perfectly comfortable with the result.\u00a0 But communication is about using words in ways that are not just personal but understood in common, and this one has now splattered all over the map, including in ways that I find troubling.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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Competing Urbanisms (by Yuri Artibise)<\/p><\/div>\n

I like several parts of Benfield\u2019s argument, and I love Frank\u2019s argument with respect to \u201cvibrant.\u201d\u00a0 I agree that vocabulary is important and that we need to be precise in our use and vigilant about other uses. \u00a0I also agree that inter-subjective agreement about the meaning of words has value given that city-building is a collective undertaking.\u00a0 But Benfield\u2019s complaint seems to be with a particular strain of urbanism, New Urbanism<\/a>.\u00a0 I\u2019m sympathetic to his critique of New Urbanism at the same time that I support the Congress\u2019s work to keep tweaking that which is considered “New.” \u00a0I also find the many other<\/em>\u00a0contributions \u00a0to urbanism that Benfield mentions to be interesting and useful.\u00a0 The various urbanisms that compete for the hearts and minds of city-lovers privilege different entry points to seeing and bettering the city.\u00a0 Comparing these variants<\/a> allows one to take the measure of their underlying theories, epistemologies, and practical consequences.\u00a0 Comparison helps clarify their distinguishing features and emphases, the possibilities for synthesis, and the irreconcilabilities.\u00a0 It identifies contradictions and blind spots in our thinking and inspires new thought about how to resolve the contradictions and fill the blind spots.<\/p>\n

The concept of urbanism is essential to our vocabulary if it\u2019s also understood as a process <\/em>rather than a product<\/em>. \u00a0If we\u2019re looking for words to jettison, urban planning<\/em>\u2014a word that Benfield doesn\u2019t recognize as problematic\u2014might be the better choice.\u00a0 I\u2019m struck by the distinction between urban planning and urbanism that\u2019s made by Barcelona<\/a>\u00a0architect and City Councillor\u00a0Itziar Gonz\u00e0lez<\/a>.\u00a0 Jeb Brugmann<\/a> describes\u00a0Gonz\u00e0lez’s\u00a0distinction in the chapter on Barcelona\u2019s Gr\u00e0cia District<\/a> in his book Welcome to the Urban Revolution: How Cities are Changing the World<\/em><\/a>.\u00a0 For Gonz\u00e0lez, urban planning:<\/p>\n

\n
\"\"<\/a>

Itziar Gonz\u00e1lez<\/p><\/div>\n

…starts from the premise that \u201cwe want to reach this goal.\u201d\u00a0 Urbanism, in contrast, asks \u201chow do we reach this goal?” \u00a0<\/em>[Gonz\u00e0lez] draws\u00a0a picture of a boat on a large sheet of paper. Then she shows the boat being buffeted by strong winds, just like the pressures a city faces during its redevelopment, which threaten to push its vision off course. \u201cTo reduce the pressure of the winds on the boat,\u201d she argues, the planner makes the boat bigger and bigger. In other words, the project becomes less responsive to local values and priorities. It increasingly focuses on the needs of the boat. In contrast, she explains as she continues her paper illustration, \u201durbanism is adding and developing solutions for all the different interests.\u201d She draws each interest as a little boat.\u00a0 \u201cUrbanism is getting lots of little boats moving in a similar direction.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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Gr\u00e0cia\u00a0District, Barcelona (Tatjana Buisson)<\/p><\/div>\n

Regrettably, for Gonz\u00e0lez, urban planning still substitutes for urbanism in Barcelona. \u00a0And probably elsewhere as well. The\u00a0challenge to urbanists working towards revitalization or regeneration in any city is to get an accurate assessment of \u201clittle boats\u201d and their implications for designing the built environment.\u00a0 That\u2019s why I especially like the work of folks who are dedicated to thinking about a specifically intercultural<\/em> urbanism, as well as those invested in Latino, Everyday, and other urbanisms that put diversity first<\/a>.\u00a0 They focus on identifying and working with different interests instead of assuming they don\u2019t exist, ignoring them, caricaturing them, or declaring that they don\u2019t matter because they\u2019re outnumbered by a dominant majority interest.\u00a0 We need to understand, \u00a0accommodate, balance, and integrate majority and<\/em> minority interests if we\u2019re going to build better, more livable neighborhoods and cities. \u00a0And I think we already have some pretty good concepts for achieving that goal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Kaid Benfield thinks so (see here and again here).\u00a0 He believes the word \u201curbanism\u201d is overused and, consequently, stifling creative thought about cities and their planning. \u00a0He thus joins vocabulary policemen like Thomas Frank who\u2019d like to purge other words\u2014specifically, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"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":[8,18,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1926","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","category-intercultural-city","category-new-urbanism"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1H2bI-v4","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1926","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\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1926"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1926\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1945,"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1926\/revisions\/1945"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1926"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1926"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1926"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}