{"id":343,"date":"2011-07-29T17:42:21","date_gmt":"2011-07-29T23:42:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/?p=343"},"modified":"2016-06-23T07:41:37","modified_gmt":"2016-06-23T13:41:37","slug":"brand-x-urbanism-and-cultural-diversity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/?p=343","title":{"rendered":"Brand X Urbanism and Cultural Diversity"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019d like to revisit an issue raised in my recent summary<\/a> of James Kunstler\u2019s view of the urban future.\u00a0 This issue is the relative merits of competing urbanisms for addressing the contemporary challenges that confront city designers and planners.\u00a0 Kunstler identifies New Urbanism<\/strong> as the only urbanism capable of informing design choices for the future, and suggests that many urbanisms on the ever-expanding list of \u201cBrand X\u201d (or, “Fill in the Blank<\/a>“) alternatives \u2014he specifically mentions\u00a0Landscape Urbanism<\/strong>\u2014are \u201cfashion statements\u201d that offer little additional value.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>The often acrimonious debate between New and Landscape (or, alternatively,\u00a0Ecological<\/strong>) Urbanists is certainly the showdown that\u2019s generated the most recent heat (e.g., see here<\/a>\u00a0and, for an exemplary piece of side-taking, here<\/a>). I tend to agree with those observers who argue that, given the magnitude of the urban challenges facing us, we should be open to any<\/em> conceptual suggestion for re-making cities regardless of its source (e.g., see\u00a0here<\/a> and\u00a0here<\/a>\u00a0and various commentators here<\/a>).\u00a0 From an anthropological perspective it only makes sense that any plan, Big or Little<\/a>, should harmonize with the natural environment and employ architecture as a strategy for nurturing commitments to place. \u00a0Thus, interventions in the New Urbanism-Landscape Urbanism debate that call for a better and less divisive conversation aimed at forging some consensus if not a holistic, hybrid,\u00a0or \u201cplanetary<\/a>\u201d urbanism are well-taken.<\/p>\n

But even these synthetic efforts are likely to be limited without more thoroughgoing attention to the difference that culture<\/em> makes in how people relate to both<\/em> environment and architecture. \u00a0Provocative and compelling arguments have been made that all cultural groups have tendencies to value particular kinds of landscapes as a result of a shared evolutionary history<\/a>. \u00a0However,\u00a0urbanisms that start with the natural environment can still benefit from more research<\/a> on how ethnic groups \u201ccognize\u201d their natural surroundings differently as a function of history and socialization (see also here<\/a>).<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Like Landscape Urbanism, the latest version of New Urbanism\u2014what founder Andres Duany calls Agrarian Urbanism<\/strong><\/a>\u2014can benefit from a more serious engagement with the phenomenon of culture.\u00a0 Agrarian Urbanism is keen to address problems of urban sustainability by incorporating various forms of food production into the basic New Urban fabric.\u00a0 These include, among other things, medium-sized farms (a substitute for golf course fairways) and community gardens (a substitute for front yards).\u00a0 But while Duany is explicit in distinguishing Agrarian Urbanism by highlighting its emphasis on food production as a societal<\/em> commitment, society is not equivalent to culture.\u00a0 Choices around food–what is grown, how it is harvested and prepared, how and where it is consumed, its symbolic meaning, and so on–are choices central to how a culture defines itself.\u00a0\u00a0 It is striking, for example, that in current formulations<\/a> of Agrarian Urbanism cultural diversity appears only in the form of “Hispanic laborers” who will continue to be called upon to do the \u201cdirty work\u201d associated with the more labor-intensive forms of urban farming (albeit in the context of \u201ca closer relationship with their employers”). \u00a0As Mike Soron<\/a> notes, Agrarian Urbanism risks \u201crepurposing an economic underclass from ornamental landscaping and golf course maintenance to productive cultivation.\u201d And, as Greg Lindsay<\/a> suggests, if Agrarian Urbanism sticks with New Urbanist town planning and architectural principles this repurposing is likely to take place in a built setting strongly redolent of pre-1850s small-town–i.e., Anglo–America. \u00a0In short, Agrarian Urbanism as currently formulated risks producing a “New Feudalism” driven by a particularly narrow and potentially highly exclusive set of cultural expectations and prescriptions.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>The insensitivity to culture evident in the more higher profile competing urbanisms is why I think Latino Urbanism<\/a><\/strong>\u2014to the extent that it foregrounds issues of culture\u2014should be closely watched as one Brand X alternative that\u2019s capable of pointing the way to a more holistic, sustainable, and democratic approach to city-making.\u00a0 Leading advocates of Latino Urbanism like James Rojas<\/a>,\u00a0Michael Mendez<\/a>, Teddy Cruz<\/a>, and Katherine Perez<\/a>\u00a0think broadly and deeply about the kinds of design elements<\/a> that best serve Latino cultural values and preferences. These include preferences for high density neighborhoods connected by public transport, for a variety of housing options including units that can accommodate the multiple generations that come together in large extended families, and for houses and house groups organized around shared courtyards and patios so as to better serve the child care and other common needs of unrelated households that, as Mike Davis notes in Magical Urbanism<\/em>, sometimes move as entire \u201ctransnationalized communities.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Schematic Comparison of House Form (from James Rojas, Latino Urbanism: A New Model for Sustainable Transportation)<\/p><\/div>\n

In Latino Urbanism the boundaries between public and private space are also more fluid, with features like porches, verandas, and front yards serving as interaction-rich “transitional” or “intermediary” zones.\u00a0 Any formal bounding that occurs here is both social and practical.\u00a0 For example, fences are not of the stereotypical white picket variety often pictured in, or conjured up as a mental image of, the New Urbanism.\u00a0 Fences catalyze social interaction and serve not only to roughly demarcate private from public space \u00a0but also to transform streets into plazas. They also\u00a0routinely function to hang wet<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Street as Plaza (from James Rojas, Latino Urbanism: A New Model for Sustainable Transportation)<\/p><\/div>\n

laundry (thereby\u00a0serving the cause of planetary sustainability<\/a>) and goods for sale.\u00a0 Spaces often begrudgingly tolerated as necessary by-products of mixed use urbanism\u2014e.g., surface parking lots (when they haven\u2019t been replaced by parking garages)\u2014allow other important contributions to an \u201cinformal economy\u201d materialized as the stalls, pushcarts, and vans of street vendors. Parks and green spaces also function as surrogates for hard plazas and thus must be designed and equipped for intensive large group use including soccer games, family reunions, neighborhood parties, and community festivals.<\/p>\n

Of course, such values and preferences are not exclusively Latino, and we\u2019re guilty of stereotyping by other means if we imply that they are. \u00a0Same goes for the values, preferences, and design features associated with the concept of Black Urbanism<\/a><\/strong>. \u00a0That\u2019s why we\u2019re keen in this blog to highlight both difference and similarity<\/em> in the ways that people from various cultural traditions construct and use the urban built environment.\u00a0Intercultural Urbanism<\/strong> is interested not only in humankind\u2019s shared predispositions for certain kinds of landscapes and built forms but also the novel and hybrid forms (nicely described by James Rojas as a syncretic vernacular<\/em>) that spring from historically-contingent cultural interactions and encounters.\u00a0 Latino Urbanists are doing great work to prompt and promote better thinking about urban place-making within a broadly similar agenda. \u00a0Such an agenda is becoming increasingly important as our cities diversify via immigration and, as reported just yesterday in The Denver Post<\/em>,\u00a0rural flight<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019d like to revisit an issue raised in my recent summary of James Kunstler\u2019s view of the urban future.\u00a0 This issue is the relative merits of competing urbanisms for addressing the contemporary challenges that confront city designers and planners.\u00a0 Kunstler […]<\/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":[4,8,18,16,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-343","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-architecture","category-general","category-intercultural-city","category-new-urbanism","category-sustainability"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1H2bI-5x","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/343","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=343"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/343\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3594,"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/343\/revisions\/3594"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=343"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=343"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=343"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}