Category: Placemaking and Design (Page 1 of 6)

From Archives) How Hey Arnold inspired suburban millennials to dream about the city

November 1, 2022 / odrozd

This post was originally published on November 7, 2017.

By Kyrsten French

Nickelodeon 90’s cartoons largely reflect the suburban world that much of its young audience grew up in.¹ Think Spongebob’s Bikini Bottom or the Rugrats’ California single-family residential neighborhood. One show, Hey Arnold, stands out from the rest, taking its viewers out of the suburbs for a trip downtown. During a time when many young Millennials had experiences of the urban core in decline, this cartoon showed us the potential for having fun in the city. As a kid, I was fascinated by the scenery and by the apparent freedom granted to the characters to move around and be independent. This was my first glimpse of what an urban center could be.

Arnold and his friends have the kind of lifestyle that today’s planners dream of creating. This nine-year-old’s home is Hillwood City, a fictional amalgam of Portland, Seattle, and Brooklyn. Arnold’s parents are absent from his life, so he lives with his spunky grandparents in a boardinghouse inhabited by neighbors of varying ages, races, nationalities and income-levels. Arnold knows every one of them, in part because they often eat meals together. His friends all live in the neighborhood, and they are able to walk by themselves to school, to get ice cream or to go down the block to play baseball. Local business owners keep their eyes on the street and quietly ensure everything stays calm and copacetic. A cool jazz beat accompanies the cast as they stroll through their lives. The city feels safe, vibrant and romantic, and the viewer can’t help but want to join these kids in their city draped in sunset. It’s a Jane Jacobs-inspired cityscape of a well-connected, vibrant, urban village.

More than structures, a city’s fabric consists of its inhabitants. The major theme of Hey Arnold is about how people learn to live together, celebrate their differences and help each other get through life’s challenges. It has a timeless message of tolerance and unity. The show explores such themes as ethnic heritage, neighborhood character, urban decline and revival, and even one boy’s addiction – to chocolate. “Stoop Kid,” is an episode about a boy who sits on his front stoop and taunts passersby, until it is discovered by the neighborhood kids that he is actually deathly afraid of leaving his front porch. Some turn to taunt him back.

“Stoop Kid.” Photo Credit: heyarnoldreviewed.blogspot.com/20 1

Instead of following the crowd, Arnold helps Stoop Kid overcome his phobia. In the end, many in the neighborhood gather to cheer as Stoop Kid finally lets go of his fear of the unknown and steps down. Most episodes follow the same pattern, where a new character at first may seem scary or difficult to relate to, until Arnold decides to get to know them and finds out that despite appearances, they really aren’t so different.

Let the rest of this visual tour through Arnold’s city be an argument to share this cartoon with the kids in your life, or revisit it on your own to re-imagine downtown through the eyes of a child.

The boarding house where Arnold lives. Photo credit: heyarnold.wikia.com/wiki/Sunset_A 1

Jane Jacobs’ “eyes on the street.” Photo Credit: heyarnoldreviewed.blogspot.com/20

Kids walk through the city without supervision. Photo credit: heyarnold.wikia.com/wiki/Hillwood 1

This nine-year-old rides the bus solo. Photo credit: elitedaily.com/humor/hey-arnold-a 2

Arnold’s grandpa, in the city park, attempting to beat Robby Fischer at Chinese checkers. Photo credit: heyarnold.wikia.com/wiki/Steely_P 1

How about that time the neighborhood kids pitched in to clean up an abandoned lot to make a baseball field, only to have the adults take it over for their urban farming projects? Photo Credit: heyarnold.wikia.com/wiki/The_Vaca 1

Hillwood is a made-up, but truly great, American city that has inspired many Millennials to dream of more than what the suburbs can offer. Hey Arnold is available on Netflix and Hulu.

Hillwood. Photo Credit: heyarnold.wikia.com/wiki/Hillwood 2

¹ Schneider, William. July 1992. “The Suburban Century Begins.” The Atlantic Monthly. Retrieved from: https://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/politics/ecbig/schnsub.htm.

Featured Image: The City of Hillwood, from Hey Arnold. Photo Credit: elitedaily.com/humor/hey-arnold-a 1

About the author: Kyrsten French was a DCRP master’s student specializing in Land Use and Environmental Planning. Her main area of interest is understanding and communicating how the city works as a financial entity, with the belief that knowing the true cost of sprawl will prompt leaders to avoid it. Before coming to DCRP, Kyrsten went to the Ohio State University and studied philosophy and Chinese. She went on to hike the Appalachian Trail in 2014.

Undergrads analyze UNC spaces

July 20, 2022 / odrozd

This post was originally published on February 28, 2018. As the end of summer approaches and the school year starts, we go back to one of the archives to take a look at the spaces at UNC.

By Marques Wilson, Forest Schweitzer, Olivia Corriere, Bronwyn Bishop, and Joe Young

As part of the Community Design and Green Architecture (ENEC 420) course with Eric Thomas, the Project Manager and Lead Designer at Development Finance Initiative, undergraduate UNC students evaluated public space. Using video and behavior mapping techniques, students evaluated how different local spaces are used, or not, at different times of the day and on different days. They noted weather and other factors that would influence the behavior of people in the space, and produced final reports and videos to highlight the design features that seem successful in attracting and keeping people, and those that fall short. See excerpts from two groups’ final reports and their videos below:

The Pit:

“There is nothing elegant, advanced or expertly designed about The Pit at UNC and yet it is a focal point of our campus. It is quite literally a glorified rectangle-shaped hole in the ground. It’s only definitive feature being steps lining the edge and two large trees in it’s center. How does something so simple have such an impact on the everyday lives of students? The Pit’s simplistic nature lends itself to ease of use, but it is largely so successful because of its central location. The Pit is surrounded by some of the most frequently visited buildings on campus: the student union, the Student Store, the dining hall, Lenoir, The Undergraduate Library, and Davis Library. These buildings attract students of all years and majors.

The Pit is used in many ways and is a healthy, bustling part of UNC’s campus. However, it could stand to be improved. For example, the entire unused section nearest to the Undergraduate Library could be revitalized using creative seating solutions. We propose a designed space — different than anything The Pit has seen before — of modern multi-use benches in what is now “dead space.” An example of our vision is the Plaza at Harvard and the simplistic, yet artistic benches that exist there. Our hope is that this will give new life to this area of The Pit because when people see intentional seating for them in a popular social place, they will utilize it. Also, the modern design of the benches will give The Pit and exciting element of relevance in design that college students are likely to be interested in.”

Sculpture Garden:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0wshgas3Ak&t=5s

“We chose to analyze the Sculpture Garden, which lays between Kenan College of Music, the Hanes Art Center, and Swain Hall. The space is primarily transitional, with bits of student-made art sprinkled throughout. A diagonal, bricked walkway extends through a grass matrix, forming a square with three sides touching the above buildings. The Sculpture Garden is a moderate-to-heavily used space. The primary form of traffic is individuals walking in either direction along the prescribed brick pathway. Although there were bikes present in the data, the absence of bike infrastructure, and the sometimes clogged nature of the pathway deterred most from riding their bikes through the Garden. One might think that the grass matrix would be attractive sprawling space for individuals and groups looking to eddy out of the central flow, or to simply mill about and consume the art present, but this data was absent from the study. Some few individuals crossed ‘unconventionally’ across the grass, but these were in the extreme minority. The particularity of the pathway (leading to the front doors of Hanes Art) does not lead for much variation, and thus only suits a specific type of traveler: they who wish to walk from Swain Hall, or other locals in mid campus, to Hanes Art or over to South Columbia Street.

Our recommendations would be to make the space feel like it belongs in the arts part of campus. Make it different. Make it new. The single brick path should either be removed or downplayed. A program should be put in place informing passers-by that they are free to walk in the way most organic to them, for perhaps a year. At the end of this period, the paths naturally worn into the grass matrix could be either bricked over or simply defined and formalized. More sculptures and places for people to sit should be installed. The sculptures fortify the space; they make a large, empty space feel small and intimate. They afford privacy without actually cutting the individual off from the rest of the Garden. Even non-three dimensional additions like posters and murals on the sides of Kenan and Hanes would really bring the place alive. There is ample real estate with which to flesh out not only the Sculpture Garden, but to crystalize what it means to be an artist at Carolina. In doing so the university could strengthen its image, and foster a robust space for artists on campus to share their own work and consume and comment on the work of their peers and mentors.”

Analysis of the Sculpture Garden by Marques Wilson (Undergraduate Senior, Public Relations B.A., Sustainability Minor), Forest Schweitzer (Undergraduate Junior, Environmental Studies B.A. – Sustainability Track), and Olivia Corriere (Undergraduate Sophomore, Environmental Studies B.A. – Sustainability Track, Geography Minor).

Analysis of the Pit by Bronwyn Bishop (Undergraduate Senior, Environmental Studies B.A. – Sustainability Track, Writing for the Screen and Stage Minor) and Joe Young (Senior, Environmental Science B.S., Mathematics Minor).

Featured Image: The Pit at UNC Chapel Hill. Photo Credit: UNC Admissions

Planning When it’s Not the Point: Urban Design Fun in a Non-City-Building Videogame

April 30, 2021 / odrozd

By Evan King

Imagine, if you will, life as a pixelated farmer in a remote pixelated village. You live in a small hut with a bed and maybe a window but nothing else. You wake every morning to tend to your plot of wheat and head to bed as the sun sets. Similar sites are scattered over vast distances, but these villages are the only intelligent life occurring across your entire world.

A different kind of being arrives one day- an unfriendly menace. Accustomed to little else but violence in videogames and pretty much out of boredom, he sets about burning down the place. He rounds up you and your fellow villagers and throws you all into a pit of lava with an elaborate sacrificial temple altar that he’s managed to construct in a matter of minutes. Another visitor from beyond arrives moments later, yelling “God damnit, Dan!” This was about ten years ago- we were building an empire. I was trying to be Caesar, and my college buddy was acting more like Genghis Khan and really ruining the whole thing. I had scoped out a corridor to bring a rail line out to the village, built some housing, installed better lighting for the villagers, and started erecting a defensive town wall. Now, we didn’t have anything to work with. I stopped playing with him soon after – I take Minecraft way too seriously.

A typical naturally occurring village you’ll come across. As seen from a horse – they added horses to the game a few years ago, I have favored railways – you can’t start a new village without a railway or waterway to bring your colonists

Trying to cooperatively build a city with some other friends later, I found myself trying to make rules. I suggested that they try to coordinate their buildings and monuments or that they try to build things reasonably close together so the AI villagers could navigate, live, and do their little activities on a genuine urban scale. Looking back now- ten years later- I should have known all along. “You’re acting like an urban planner,” my mother said over my shoulder during a college Christmas break, unwittingly changing my life.

*A friend of mine’s neighboring town, he’s struggling with scale but he’s getting there*

The function of these randomly generated villages and their inhabitants, as far as the game really has functions, is to give the player better access to rare materials and items through a currency-based trading system. The items serve the player in doing whatever else they want to do, which can be quite a few different things in Minecraft. People explore, build their dream castles, beat the crap out of each other, make artwork, follow some of the game’s treasure hunting plotlines, and even engineer computers with the game’s logic blocks. Most people, however, play the game as amateur architects, taking the landscape’s various raw materials and converting them into grand monuments – endless electronic legos.

Most people play this game in a way that falls short for me. People build their spectacular creations in the middle of nowhere, not relating to anything like the surrounding world or its people. Players do build “cities,” but for the most part they consist of empty boxes. They are merely models that don’t actually function in the game and are entirely out of scale with everything else. Dubai or Hudson Yards come to mind as some of the few real-life examples of this.

One can build at breathtaking scale and even realism in this game. Minecraft is about building, but even so I would argue that at this point you aren’t really playing the game, but using it as a CAD technique. No AI villagers will be able to navigate this (there are no working cars, nor do these ship sculptures do anything) or find it legible, and it doesn’t serve any gameplay use to you, the player – it is just a model. (Image: https://cubed.community/)

This is all well and good as it’s only a game after all, but for me, the mechanics of villages and villagers are a large part of the point. You can make villages that look good and function well in a hybrid city builder-architectural sandbox situation. The low-resolution block structure of everything ensures that you don’t focus too much on the purely artistic side. You can house residences (beds) and job locations (consisting of certain utility blocks) in any architecture or urban layout you see fit or can build. But basic planning principles happen to dictate how well they end up working. Can the villagers get from their houses or apartments to their jobs? Can they meet at the center of the village to trade and mate? “Mating” consists of a dance with hearts in the air and the instant appearance of a baby, who proceeds to start running around. There is no gender, although they sound as much like Squidward as they look. Is the area well-lit and defended? Various monsters spawn in dark areas. It makes sense in some cases to build a medieval style wall around a town, which can encourage compact, visually pleasing design as in real life. You can breed villagers with (inhumane- if they were real) enclosure facilities and put them in cages so they are right where you need them when you want to trade, and many players do this, but I prefer letting them function as the game intended and not having my villages be prisons.

*Villagers enjoying well-defined urban space in the town square – they like posing for the camera*

At the center of the village is a bell, which is naturally generated in most cases, but also purchasable from certain villagers. This- along with two kidnapped villagers- can be used to start a new village from scratch. You can put the bell anywhere, but I like to make a central square or green with it as the centerpiece. Villagers all gather to it at the end of each day. The bell also functions as a safety alarm; when roving marauders called “pillagers” attack, you can ring it and the villagers will all rush inside their houses (fortifications are useful here too, though very rarely needed). Before they introduced bells you had to pay even more attention to urban design. You needed a central open area surrounded by intense use, precisely occupying the population barycenter to ensure this was the main congregating area. If you didn’t, the villagers would start to glitch and abandon the village or disappear, but there is more leeway for error here now.

A waterfront I am attempting to make progress on in my principal town – we recently dug a canal to connect two river systems and give this previously landlocked area access to the ocean

But all the while, there is the entire rest of the game to be played- climbing mountains, slaying dragons, pranking your friends and the like. You can play the urban planner when everyone else is doing something else. In this way, I value it immensely over ‘city builders’ like Sim City, where you preside over people meant for no other purpose than to simulate city building and administration. You also actually experience what you build in this game, it is not top-down.

*A view across the central part of my principal city from a rooftop – “old town” area in the middle ground, where an ugly megastructure once stood, is still a work in progress.*

While the villagers in Minecraft may not exist for their own sake either, they exist for a purpose other than your urban design schemes. But you can design environments to improve their functionality. Any urban design you do is for other players’, AI’s, and even your own wider purposes in the game. You can build a city to slay a dragon – it all connects, just like in real life. Both function and form can be manipulated in Minecraft.

*Ocean exploration, for treasure, creature encounters, or new lands, is one of many activities you can get up to in this game – and village design can serve here too*

Even the game’s distance from explicit or formal city building is the very thing that seems to draw some players – absolute freedom in terms of land use. I’ve always said Americans need to play Minecraft to get their antisocial or libertarian impulses out; one mother on Twitter recently remarked that her eight-year-old child likes the game because there are “no zoning laws,” a child I hope grows up to liberate us all from single-family zoning and the automobile. But this is true in the sense that you can do whatever you want in general, and also in the sense that you can do what you want without America’s ugly, racist rules stopping you.

*The appeal of Minecraft on the left and the right*

That is why I play it. In a little over a month, I’ll be starting at a planning job. I may very well need a virtual escape, where I can be a dictator for life – then I can happily serve the wishes of a real suburban public in real life. On the other hand, Minecraft makes you accommodate people and their needs in your schemes as effectively as you can, which also makes it engrossing. Essentially the appeal is the satisfaction of all your hopeless democratic yearnings but also your despotic impulses – in one convenient place. Maybe there’s a tyrant, a public servant, an urbanite and a hermit in all of us.

Large buildings are harder to keep safely lit, and shadows under these gratuitous freeway overpasses spawn more monsters – this is a view of my Corbusian zombie town, built out of materials from the game’s Hell. Diagonal designs are unpleasant or awkward in this grid and block-based game, while real life towers like these sit at angles that do not relate to streets or define space.

This post is not intended as an endorsement of Minecraft; the creation of a notoriously sexist programmer and now a massive, over-merchandized monstrosity owned by Microsoft. But for me, it is a guilty pleasure that likely influenced my life and career (as far as it’s really started). And hey, check out what I made – these are mostly screenshots from my server. Join me! I promise I won’t make you fill out any permits.

Author Bio: Evan King is a second-year master’s student in city and regional planning. His interests include transportation policy in the developing world, light rail, and freight movement on inland waterways. He can found in his free time trying to kayak long distances and making hand-drawn maps. Evan hails from central Connecticut and completed an undergraduate degree in Maryland. Opinions are his own.

Featured images courtesy of Evan King

Reading for the Job Search and the Soul Search: Capital City & Prophetic City

April 1, 2021 / odrozd

By Evan King

People who go into the planning profession are inclined to like walkable, human-scale environments, effective public transit, vibrant cultural life, diverse culture and job opportunities, and other such things. One irony of planning is that the job often brings people to places that do not have these factors or are maybe at the beginning stages of incorporating them.

Even a job of trying to change things is an optimistic and unlikely outcome. As with any profession intent on improving the world, disappointment in this regard can generate quite a lot of cynicism and hopelessness. Despite drawbacks, I still want to do this job. There are two books that have done wonders for me in rectifying the ideals of the planning profession with its realities. What an aspiring planner may need is a good hard look at the cities of New York and Houston, through the fresh and subversive voices of authors Samuel Stein and Stephen Klineberg.

Samuel Stein: Capital City

In a similar manner to Howard Zinn’s telling of US history in A People’s History of the United States, Stein’s Capital City, Gentrification and the Real Estate State is very much a “People’s History” of American planning, serving as a counterweight to Jane Jacobs’ Death and Life and other sacred texts. Urban renewal was indeed a crime against humanity, as is continuing suburban sprawl, but what about the coinciding de-funding of public housing? Can we really say design is the sole problem when federal, state, and local governments have done all they possibly could to subsidize white homeowners and impoverish (and increasingly force everyone to become) renters? Stein’s book is not an outright repudiation of Jacobs, like A People’s History is of other accounts of US history, but rather an affirmation with a profound shift in the implications. Jacobs said success can breed self-destruction in a city. You could say that is happening in New York now, but are design elements solely culpable? What else is going on here?

Stein provides a vivid and intricate picture of gentrification in New York, a city so commoditized that any improvement in urban form seems to hurt more people than it helps. Developers, egged on by city and state tax giveaways, build towers designed to be expensive and largely unoccupied. Buildings and properties get passed off at higher and higher prices to other large owners in a scheme that pointlessly raises rents across the city and seems destined for a disastrous collapse for all parties.

Stein enumerates actions that planners, governments, and organizers can take to fight the injustices of urban life as run by real estate. The message is stridently socialist, which is no problem for me. To me, however, the takeaway is a (probably unintended) confirmation of my growing dislike for the glamorous side of urbanism: the modern trend of re-urbanization as a change in fashion, usually at the expense of the most vulnerable people. Even the word “urbanism” seems to embody how pretentious the whole thing is. Doing the work of making good urban environments possible in “unfashionable” places feels a lot more righteous and even more appealing after reading Stein’s book. Sure, there is justice to be done in New York and much to enjoy, but New York does not need me.

Stephen Klineberg: Prophetic City

Stephen Klineberg’s Prophetic City tells the economic and demographic story of Houston, a contender for the world’s least glamorous city and something of an urban horror story that is nonetheless a gem in other ways. The book is an exercise in seeing beauty and potential. Metropolitan Houston is the most culturally diverse region in the country. The city’s anathema to planning, resistance to regulation, and reliance on toxic industry have led to eclectic business and social environments more inclined to fight for social justice and environmental causes. In the recent presidential and senate elections, Georgia demonstrated the phenomenon of a voter-suppressed state; there is every indication that Texas is similar. Houston has a population overwhelmingly progressive in political, social and economic views, but the city is under the thumb of strategically malapportioned political representation. Houston area residents want greater racial integration, better city services, and better urban environments, but the state does not necessarily represent them in these interests.

At times, Klineberg writes with infuriating optimism, and without the socialist conscience Stein has about what “economic revitalization” usually means for most people. However, he consistently reminds us of political realities after exhaustively outlining demographic and economic trends. The overall picture according to Klineberg and other authors is that, Texas, and especially Houston, is the future. Booming cities like Houston are places where there is work to be done, and where the most work probably should be done.

In recent conversations about jobs with my classmates, people have been frustrated and often cynical. I count myself as one of the most guilty. Some have understandably realized they do not want to be planners. However, if you still want to be an urban planner, I pose a question: what are you really trying to do with this degree? You’re probably not in it just for the money. Are you trying to live in a wonderful vibrant place or create one? There is nothing wrong with the former. It’s a great thing in fact. The latter is naïve to be sure, but if you’re open to my suggestion, I say have an open mind. Go to that sprawling boomtown or struggling backwater. Maybe you won’t really accomplish anything, but maybe you will!

I am a born and bred northerner; I need my cold, snowy winters and their miraculous springs, and I like not having my political voice gerrymandered away. Yet a substantial portion of the planning work is in the south, and one thing I’ve noticed is that almost every planning job interview I have had so far has involved a panel member saying they never wanted to live in the south, but they have loved the past 10 to 15 years and are here to stay. Klineberg’s book presents statistically significant proportions of transplants saying this about Houston. Maybe I’ve just spent enough time idle and made a decision I am rightly or wrongly sticking with, but I still want to do planning. Personally, I am having a hard time being picky about where. People move to follow opportunities, and in my limited experience, it pays to be open-minded on the various forms opportunities might take.

Featured Image courtesy of iStockphoto. Other images show the covers of the recommended books: Capital City, Gentrification and the Real Estate State by Samuel Stein and Prophetic City: Houston on the Cusp of a Changing America by Stephen L. Klineberg.

Edited by: Ruby Brinkerhoff

Planners as Pollinators

February 26, 2021 / odrozd

By Pierce Holloway

Picture yourself in a forest. You are surrounded by trees, shrubs, flowers, birds, and deer. A creek. Insects.
All around you is a cacophony of living organisms and beings large and small,
each playing a crucial role in the overall health of the environment.
Hold this image in your mind.
Piece by piece, visualize the creek being replaced with a sidewalk, the trees with buildings, the insects with cars, the deer with people, the flowers with street performers, and the shrubs with manicured landscaping.
Before you know it, you have teleported from the Pisgah National Forest to downtown Asheville, NC.

This thought exercise introduces you to the many parallels that exist between ecological ecosystems and the human made forest of urban environments. In an urban playground of steel, concrete, and street vendors, an intricate ecosystem exists that can be observed, studied, and learned from- just like the nearby forest. Within the concrete ecosystem, city planners can and should act as pollinators. A planner acting as pollinator facilitates and encourages societal growth through the cross pollination of ideas between residents, social organizations, governments, and academics.

The idea of modeling our systems after the natural world is not new, but is of the utmost importance. Parallels between the natural world and human design have a long history of intellectual thought and self reflection. Plato (428-328 BC) stated, “The natural world we perceive through our senses (see, hear, touch etc.) reveals only a fallen, shadow, incomplete versions of this Ideal Truth.” The ideology of nature informed design has evolved time and time again, cropping up more recently in Urbanism through the minds of Ian McHarg and his seminal 1969 book Design with Nature or Timothy Beatley and the Biophilic Cities movement. The blog The Nature of Cities dedicates itself to the core elements of these concepts.

The metaphor of a planner as pollinator builds on the complicated relationship that pollinators have with plants in their natural biome. Pollinating is not a one size fits all profession. General pollinators like Bees and Butterflies transport pollen between countless flora species. Specialized pollinators such as the Yucca moth (Tegeticulla yuccasella) have evolved to pollinate only one plant, the soapweed yucca (Yucca glauca), whose seeds provide the food for the Yucca Moths larvae. The Yucca moth exemplifies the idea that pollinators are in a symbiotic, interdependent, and mutually beneficial relationship with their environment. The pollinator benefits the flower, and the plant provides critical nourishment for the pollinator.

*A Yucca Moth Pollinating Soapweed Yucca. Photo Credit: NCSU*.

This symbiotic relationship is at the heart of my connection between planners and pollinators. Planners can be generalists or specialists, both of which benefit from interacting with and listening to individuals across the spectrum of municipal services and city ecosystems at large. Planners are not only pollinators, but can act as cross-pollinators and should seek a variety of experiences outside of the blinders that planning school offers. Planners are bestowed with a wealth of tools and power as municipal servants or private consultants. This position consequently gives planners a responsibility to expand their interdisciplinary thinking as a way to offer the best services possible. It behooves the profession of planning for individuals to seek out experiences from people outside the planning hive mind.

Perhaps Maya Angelou said it best,

“You are the sum total of everything you’ve ever seen, heard, eaten, smelled, been told, forgot – it’s all there. Everything influences each of us, and because of that I try to make sure that my experiences are positive.”

Planners can expand their horizons and their toolboxes through exposure to new ideas in their ecosystems, which helps create a sum total that is rich with nuance and considerate of the complicated needs present in city ecology.

Pollinators, while an integral part of the ecosystem, are just one part. Planners perform a similar function, as processors that are one of many important revolving parts of an ecosystem. If you are a planner, an urban enthusiast, or otherwise, I encourage you to see the parallels between planning and a forest ecosystem. Begin to notice the other aspects of your ecosystem / your city that help you create a more comprehensive and interconnected understanding of your world. What ecosystem are you a part of, and how can you build new symbiotic relationships within it?

Pierce Holloway is a first-year master’s student at the Department of City and Regional Planning with a focus on Climate Change Adaptation. Before coming to Chapel Hill he worked as a geospatial analyst for Urban3, working on visualizing economic productivity of communities and states. Through his coursework he hopes to explore the nexus between adaptation for climate change and community equitability. In his free time, he enjoys long bike rides, trail running, and any excuse to play outside.

Piece edited by Ruby Brinkerhoff

Featured Image: Combination of https://best-wallpaper.net/ & https://www.cbf.org/issues/forest-loss/, Photoshop by w. Pierce Holloway

Yucca Moth Image: https://projects.ncsu.edu/cals/course/ent425/images/pollinators_gallery/pages/06_yucca_moth_jpg.htm

From the CPJ Archives: Creative Placemaking

February 10, 2020 / odrozd

This week, we’re sharing an article that originally appeared in Volume 41 of the Carolina Planning Journal back in 2016. The theme of that edition was Just Creativity. To kick it off, DCRP Professor Andrew Whittemore reviewed the literature on placemaking and explored where the arts and creativity intersect with planning.

Volume 41 and other back issues of the Journal can be found on our website at http://carolinaplanning.unc.edu/.

By Andrew Whittemore

The purpose of this article is to contextualize the contributions within this issue of the Carolina Planning Journal within a review of recent literature on the subject of creative placemaking. Creative placemaking refers to efforts to use the arts for means exceeding their intrinsic value as beautiful, innovative, critical, and inspiring; in particular it refers to private, public and non-profit sector initiatives seeking to harness the arts for economic and community development purposes.

Creative placemaking is a new term for an old concept. In the City Beautiful era, local elites funded the construction of museums and architecturally elaborate civic spaces with the goal of effecting social change and boosting the image of cities nationally and internationally. In the 1950s and 1960s urban renewal efforts continued the trend, with the most well-known examples being New York’s Lincoln Center and Los Angeles’ Music Center (Grodach and Loukaitou-Sideris 2007). In the last quarter of the twentieth century, after the termination of urban renewal, cities turned to public-private redevelopment projects with clearer relationships to business and consumerism. These almost always targeted downtown areas, and included festival marketplaces such as Baltimore’s Inner Harbor and Boston’s Faneuil Hall Marketplace, as well as far more ubiquitous convention centers and sports stadiums. However, since the 1990s, cities, regions, and even small towns have returned to using the arts to promote economic and community development. Artists have often taken the initiative, given the crisis in public arts funding at the end of the 20^th century (Markusen 2014, 568). These initiatives have become central to economic and community development efforts since the millennium, and consequently offer “yeasty new areas for research” for academics (Markusen 2014, 568).

In their 2010 White Paper, Markusen and Gadwa outlined the multiple benefits of creative placemaking strategies. While creative placemaking can revolve around large flagship institutions, it is most effective when decentralized, involving multiple entrepreneur-artists, participants, artistic media, and venues. This creates the potential for the revitalization of entire neighborhoods, small towns, and cities around arts-based identities. Not only is the arts a diverse, innovative, and export-generating economic sector (Markusen and Gadwa, 8), but a thriving arts scene, unlike stadiums or convention centers, fosters a unique identity and workforce retention (Markusen and Gadwa 2010, 19-20). Successful strategies, Markusen and Gadwa show, are place-based, creating opportunities for clusters of artistic activity and in turn the beneficial economic and social impacts that such clusters can have. Successful projects range from inner-city neighborhood re-branding, to rural revitalization strategies centered on regional culture, to artist relocation, to youth arts education.

Three significant areas of critique have emerged in the creative placemaking literature in recent years. One area of critique discusses creative placemaking’s frequent basis in economic development imperatives despite the many possible contributions of artists to cities, not to mention the intrinsic value of their art itself. Grodach and Loukaitou-Sideris (2007) surveyed economic development offices in major US cities to ascertain the goals of local arts-promotion strategies. They wished to understand how often these strategies were (1) entrepreneurial in character, (2) revolved around “creative class” strategies, or (3) were community-oriented in nature. Entrepreneurial efforts are those explicitly aimed at promoting consumerism and tax revenue, often through the establishment of large flagship venues in downtown areas. Creative class strategies promote economic development by rebranding urban neighborhoods as arts-oriented districts and neighborhoods, thus attracting and retaining young, creative professionals. Community-oriented strategies serve the needs of lower-income communities, providing venues for education, arts incubation, and community participation and activism. Grodach and Loukaitou-Sideris found that by far, entrepreneurial strategies dominate when it comes to promoting the arts in US cities, despite the potential diverse contributions of creative placemaking strategies.

A second significant area of critique focuses on the potential of creative placemaking strategies to create gentrification and displacement. The narrative of artist-led neighborhood rebranding and subsequent investment and population turnover has been present within academic discussions for at least thirty years (Zukin 1982). Indeed many planners explicitly view the purpose of creative placemaking to be gentrification: the replacement of a working class population with a wealthier cadre of urbanites (Markusen 2014). Grodach, Foster and Murdoch (2014) recently investigated the relationship of two different kinds of arts activities – the fine arts and commercial arts – with indicators of gentrification (entailing neighborhood turnover) and revitalization (entailing more shared improvements). The authors found that fine arts activities, including museums, galleries, and theaters, correlate negatively with gentrification factors but positively with neighborhood revitalization factors such as rising income levels. On the other hand, commercial arts have significant association with gentrification factors of neighborhood upscaling and neighborhood build-out. These findings suggest that arts-driven gentrification is at least in part a myth, and remind planners of the varied potential of creative placemaking.

A third area of critique focuses on the ramifications of smaller venues for lower income neighborhoods, venues that have historically been “marginalized” by creative placemaking’s dominant entrepreneurial mode (Markusen 2014, 572). Markusen (2014) has recently pointed out that arts-based organizations embedded within local communities can foster activism on diverse neighborhood issues, including health, crime and immigration. Grodach (2009) conducted a survey of Dallas area artist cooperatives, arts incubators offering technical help to artists, art centers specific to ethnic minorities, and art centers intended for community use. Grodach found a story of diverse successes and limitations: some artists avoid engaging with community- oriented venues due to the perceived lower quality of their activities. But Grodach found an array of tools for planners interested in promoting revitalization through creative placemaking, and beckoned planners to move beyond their focus on consumer-oriented strategies.

This issue of the Carolina Planning Journal should be read with this literature and its critiques in mind. There are a number of contributions in this issue focusing on creative placemaking in rural settings and small towns, while others focus on new developments in diverse, big city settings. Other contributions consider the role of art in public space and creative storytelling about public space as means of taking on issues of identity and division in the urban setting. Altogether, the various contributions highlight creative placemaking as an area of planning practice consisting of far more than the conventional consumer-oriented approaches. The contributions tell a hopeful story of a variety of ways in which creative placemaking is revitalizing a great diversity of communities.

References

Grodach, C. (2009). Art Spaces in Community and Economic Development: Connections to Neighborhoods, Artists, and the Cultural Economy. Journal of Planning Education and Research, 31(1).

Grodach, C., & Loukaitou-Sideris, A. (2007). Cultural Development Strategies and Urban Revitalization: a Survey of US Cities” International Journal of Cultural Policy 13, 4:. 13(4), 349-370.

Grodach, C., Foster, N., & Murdoch, J. (2014). “Gentrification and the artistic dividend: the role of the arts in neighborhood change. Journal of the American Planning Association, 80(1), 21-35.

Markusen, A. (2014). Creative Cities: a 10-Year Research Agenda. Journal of Urban Affairs , 36(2), 567-589.

Markusen, A., & Gadwa, A. (2010). Creative Placemaking. Washington, DC: National Endowment for the Arts.Zukin, S. (1982). Loft Living . New York: Johns Hopkins University.

About the Author: Andrew Whittemore is an Assistant Professor at the Department of City and Regional Planning at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. He researches planning history and theory, urban form and design of cities, and land use planning in the United States.

Featured Image: This image, taken by Arkansas-based architectural photographer Timothy Hursley, was the cover of the 41st print edition of the Carolina Planning Journal. It features the Newbern Library, a 2013 project of the Rural Studio.

Can America Replicate Singapore’s Garden Cities?

February 3, 2020 / odrozd

By Lizzie Tong

In the realm of sustainability and urban planning, Singapore is often hailed as a city-state worthy of envy and comparison – a Garden City. Through 40 years of rapid economic development and a transformation into an international financial hub, Singapore has been mindful to protect its natural environment, developing a reputation as a leader in green design.

As a small island about half the size of Hong Kong, Singapore has limited resources available for agricultural production, clean water, and energy production. Thus, policymakers have been prudent about maximizing resources and maintaining a healthy and clean environment for citizens to live, work, and play. While Americans have the luxury of escaping city limits to a wild sanctuary, the urban island forces Singaporeans to have a heightened incentive to conserve energy use, minimize water waste, and prevent air pollution.

As a result, the city-state contains almost 50% green cover, over 150 acres of rooftop gardens and green walls, and at least 10% of land is set aside for parks and nature conservation. Further, 80% of households are within a 10-minute walk to a park. The Sustainable Singapore Blueprint details even more rigorous environmental targets for 2030, doubling the amount of skyrise greenery to almost 500 acres, creating over 50 more miles of park connector greenways, and cutting harmful emissions of particulate matter (PM 2.5) in half.

Vertical greenery and historically preserved trees along National University of Singapore. Photo Credit: Lizzie Tong

This path has been present since the founding Prime Minister, Lee Kuan Yew, stated that “the blighted urban jungle of concrete destroys the human spirit. We need the greenery of nature to lift up our spirits.” Since 1967, intentional, careful, long-term master planning directed by the government and the Urban Redevelopment Authority has succeeded in building an environment that citizens are proud of. Singaporeans have an inherent trust in policymakers to succeed in building a livable environment. Simultaneously, by pursuing a green city brand, Singapore has created a one-size-fits-all approach to sustainability.

In Singapore, green roofs, green walls, and skyrise greenery take priority over any other sustainable building solution. Cool roofs, which reflect light that would otherwise be absorbed by building materials, are much less expensive and effective at decreasing city temperatures and mitigating urban heat island. 95% of Singapore’s energy comes from natural gas and yet the Singaporean government has only recently began pushing to increase targets on solar panel coverage. Alternative sustainable building solutions are being pushed to the wayside because of the limited area of rooftops and self-imposed requirements to improve city greenery. In pursuing greenery objectives, nations like the United States overlook more feasible methods of reducing urban heat island and improving other measures, like air quality and overall well-being.

Researchers at the National University of Singapore are developing innovative ways to improve individual well-being in compact, high-density environments. Projects like Cooling Singapore consist of a research team of engineers and climatologists that are determined to collect data on the optimal outdoor thermal comfort (OTC) levels for everyday citizens and create comfortable environments to follow suit. Participants in the research respond to questions on wearable devices, gauging their individuals comfort levels based on temperature, humidity, wind speed, amount of shade, vegetation, and a variety of other factors. The research team then hopes to design indoor and outdoor environments that can be adjusted to individual comfort. For Singapore, improving well-being and livability is the final frontier in urban design – and increasing integrated greenspace is the solution to this challenge.

ParkROYAL on Pickering, Singapore, by WOHA. Photo Credit: Creative Commons, HeyItsWilliam

Yet, this blanket sustainability approach of a Garden City may only be worthwhile in certain areas. Research from the Center for Liveable Cities plots cities on a chart with livability against population density and finds that Vancouver City, Sydney, Melbourne, and Singapore rank the highest. Aside from Singapore, these cities with high rankings are also low-density. Singapore is one of the few high-density, compact environments that succeed in prioritizing well-being and livability. While residents of sprawling American cities have the option of escaping to concentrated areas of greenery, integrated greenery is the only option for a nation with limited resources and finite land.

Cloud Dome in Gardens by the Bay. Photo Credit: Lizzie Tong

The 160-foot tall Supertree Grove, powered by photovoltaic cells, along with the Cloud and Flower Domes at Gardens by the Bay are notable attractions. Designs and developments like these contribute to Singapore’s green city brand, driving the city’s tourism industry. Singapore is now the 5th most-visited city in the world. Although the design is envious, a City within a Garden transformation in American cities is likely less feasible. Unless more American city governments decide to stop developing sprawling neighborhoods and start building denser and higher, maximizing a diverse range of sustainable building solutions – cool roofs, solar panels, green roofs – will be the most low-cost, effective way to mitigate urban heat island, air pollution, and improve city well-being.

Gardens by the Bay, Singapore. Photo Credit: Creative Commons, J. Philipp Krone

Feature Image: Singapore Changi Airport, The Jewel. Photo Credit: Lizzie Tong

Sources

https://www.clc.gov.sg/research-publications/publications/digital-library/view/singapore-the-first-city-in-nature

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/23/world/asia/

eresources.nlb.gov.sg/history/events/a7fac49f-9c96-4030-8709-ce160c58d15c

About the Author: Lizzie Tong is a senior studying economics and computer science at UNC, with an interest in applying data science to solve challenges tied to urban sustainability. After graduating, she will be working as a research assistant for the Community Development and Policy Studies Team at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. In her free time, she enjoys trying her hand at oil painting, competitive running. and new Bon Appetit recipes.

Life in Copenhagen, a Living City

March 28, 2019 / odrozd

In January, I set out on my own to spend a semester in Copenhagen. My professors had told me tales of cycling culture and ski-slope-power-plants, and I was determined to see it for myself. I was a little nervous, very excited, and more prepared than I thought for life in Denmark’s capital city.

Some part of me had this expectation that all of Copenhagen is this quaint, cobblestoned dream resembling the historic Nyhavn waterfront. And you know what? Some of Copenhagen is a quaint, cobblestoned dream resembling the historic Nyhavn waterfront. And some of it is a weird, geometric hotel jutting out of the flat brush. Some of it is modern apartment buildings like nothing you would ever see in Chapel Hill. Some of it is a neighborhood introduced by my Danish friend as “not having a face yet”; there’s just a shopping mall and a library. Yep, that’s the neighborhood where I live.

A particularly out-of-place building on the flat landscape of Amager: the AC Marriott Hotel. Photo Credit: Molly Auten.

Green City, Green Space

I knew there had to be a reason why Copenhagen was the darling of all my planning AND environmental studies professors. The city has committed to becoming the world’s first carbon-neutral capital by 2025, and obviously it has impeccable transportation infrastructure. I assumed that all of that would come with dense development and minimal open space.

In reality, I actually haven’t seen one single-family home. Even on my brief commute out of the city center to my student housing in the suburbs, I pass a long row of low-rise apartments, including the Mountain Dwellings, a terraced apartment complex nestled atop an above-ground parking garage that blends right into its suburban landscape. When I was in the tenth grade, my Environmental Science teacher had a poster hanging up with a conceptual drawing of a “city of the future”. It had multi-use developments, high-speed rail, and high-density housing galore. When I look at my neighborhood, I can’t help but think of that picture.

The Mountain Dwellings: one of the tallest “mountains” you’ll find in Denmark. Photo Credit: Molly Auten.

Open space, on the other hand, is not necessarily in short supply. On the other side of my route home is a vast, flat bushland interwoven with walking and bike paths. There’s a park and playground right down the road from my apartment, and there’s a gated park akin to NYC’s Central Park nestled in between Copenhagen’s main shopping district and museums. Unfortunately, I’ve found much of this open space to be empty during the day. It’s not that these aren’t good places to enjoy public life, it’s just cold. And usually cloudy. So until those long summer daylight hours come around and the weather warms up a bit, I’ll be spending my time in Copenhagen’s abundant cafes soaking up the hygge.

Finding My Way

Even in the cycling capital of the world, I was convinced I couldn’t manage to make my way around on two wheels. In Chapel Hill, I just couldn’t crack it. The hills are too steep, Martin Luther King Boulevard is too treacherous, the bike lanes are too… wait, what bike lanes? And I don’t particularly enjoy showing up to class sweaty. Once I arrived in Copenhagen, it took me a whole month to work up the courage to rent a bike.

It turns out even I, the out-of-shape, directionally-challenged American, could get the hang of biking around Copenhagen in just a couple of days. There are dedicated bike lanes on most of the city’s streets, and on the occasional road that lacks them, drivers are accustomed to sharing the street with cyclists. I do often get sweaty before arriving to my destination, but it’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make to save money on the metro. I will say it’s a strange sensation to sweat while bundled up in a coat with freezing wind in your face.

Speaking of the metro, I assumed before I came that a “small-town” (Greensboro, NC) girl like me would inevitably get lost on the metro at least a couple of times. Wrongfully so, because the Copenhagen metro is two lines. Just two lines, and they run on the same route for half of their stops. I haven’t gotten lost once.

Copenhagen’s metro system is simple. Like, really simple. Photo Credit: Molly Auten.

Preservation Meets Innovation

If there’s one more thing Copenhagen has gotten right, it’s placemaking. Granted, I’m sure there are some similarities among the rest of Europe and Copenhagen’s shoulder-to-shoulder 18th-century buildings lining cobblestone paths. But there are certain things that are just so Copenhagen. The huge bike-ped bridge stretching across a main waterway. The trash-burning power plant-turned-ski slope (yes, you read that correctly). Whimsical trampoline insets in the sidewalk.

Some of the most distinct parts of this city are not just its historic churches and palaces, but the modern-day innovation sprinkled in among them. I think many cities with such a long, storied past are afraid to build anything that could detract from their quaint, old-time aesthetic. But Copenhagen strikes the perfect balance between preservation and innovation. It’s a living city, and I’m happy to be living in it.

: The Metro speeding by mixed-use housing and retail. Photo Credit: Molly Auten.

Featured Image: Nyhavn waterfront is bustling with sightseers on a rare sunny day. Photo Credit: Molly Auten.

About the Author: Molly Auten is a junior undergraduate studying sustainability and urban planning at UNC. She interns with the UNC Three Zeros Environmental Initiative working to plan events and engage the campus in sustainability efforts. Molly is currently spending the spring semester taking classes at the University of Copenhagen in Danish architecture, GIS, and developmental planning and policy. Outside of class, she enjoys singing, drinking chai lattes, and browsing New Urbanist Memes for Transit Oriented Teens.

Planning, Design, and McMansions: A Conversation with Kate Wagner

February 25, 2019 / odrozd

Earlier this month, first-year Master of City and Regional Planning student Emily Gvino interviewed Kate Wagner, the creator of the viral blog McMansion Hell and whose work was recently included in the Web Cultures Web Archive through the Library of Congress. Kate’s writing focuses on architecture and design, and Emily was interested in hearing her thoughts on the state of housing today, new design trends, and the connections in her work to urban planning.

What are your thoughts about the role of the public sector in informing or shaping design?

Involvement from the public sector for design standards is a good thing. We are seeing some interesting conflicts right now between aesthetic standards and friction with places who have housing shortages, a clash between homogenizing and ideological forces. From the public sector, input on urban design is important.

For example, in the City of Baltimore, there’s a growing interest and the Council is getting more involved with street design. Planning decisions were sequestered behind closed doors for some time, but now officials have been given a political platform for safer streets. The city had an abnormally high number of pedestrian deaths per year, which meant they were given the momentum needed to be put in the public awareness. This led to the campaign, and approval by the city council of the complete streets program, which may be adopted in the future.

What do you think about the effects of the anti-mansionization codes that cities such as Los Angeles are adopting?

My opinion is that anti-mansionization laws are one of the only good examples of NIMBYism. They are preventing a certain subset of the population from building single-family housing that is out of context with other neighborhoods. They are also preventing the teardowns of multifamily buildings and of historic properties at the hands of McMansions, which are also environmentally a disaster. If you are going to build to that scale, you should be building housing for multiple families. The McMansion mentality is inherently selfish and often bad for reasons other than aesthetics. For example, it messes with the property values of a certain area. In addition, people send me stories all the time where a McMansion house puts a smaller house completely in shadow.

The Tampa Bay Times featured Shirah Levine, a one-story homeowner whose property is cast in shadow by a mansion next door. Photo Credit: https://www.tampabay.com/news/business/realestate/as-florida-mcmansions-multiply-neighbors-cope-in-the-shadows/2262310

The anti-mansionization codes allow for more efficient and productive uses of land, as well as less tree removal from not building a giant house on a postage stamp-sized lot. There’s the possibility for [the codes] to be weaponized in a way that is not productive, but for now, they are good.

It’s useful to think about how eventually, these houses will have to be rehabilitated for multifamily housing and it will be interesting to see how that is accomplished. While I think the exurbs might be a lost cause, the second and third ring suburbs are probably able to be replaced or revamped for multifamily housing, following the historical patterns of housing adaptation. You can see this in historic preservation cases regarding the Chicago bungalows, which are also not being converted into multifamily housing.

What are your thoughts on the balance between affordable housing and good design? I’m interested in your take because of so much research being done about the millennial generation’s debt burden impacting their ability to purchase a home like their parent’s or grandparent’s generation.

The balance between affordability and design in some cases is tenuous and [in some] cases pretty apparent. Much of the emphasis in the [design] discourse, including from myself, is on the aesthetics of high-income properties. There’s a bit of a muddle or vagueness in the aesthetic expression of middle-income properties; in the case of multifamily housing, the same aesthetic style is often used in new build housing at diverse income levels. Ultimately, it is more affordable to build than it was before. As materials go, the same materials are used across the housing spectrum, with the exception of maybe some finishes.

I wrote another article about aesthetic moralism and the housing crisis. There are people wagging their fingers at all apartments of a certain “modern boxy” style, and calling them gentrification apartments, but there’s also a lot of HUD housing built like that. It’s hard to go by aesthetics alone to determine how much [a house or apartment] is worth.

What trends are you excited about in housing design or construction?

I’m excited about low-carbon sustainable housing and the idea of a passive house, which is a carbon neutral house and construction system. As it becomes easier to produce, it’ll have a huge impact on the carbon footprint of architecture. A lot of the things I’m excited about are in sustainable materials. For example, when I went to Finland for Helsinki Design Week, they had really amazing 100% reused recycled materials. They had particle board made out of bottles that feel just like particle board but is cheaper to produce, and Formica countertops made out of recycled materials that looked cool and vintage. There’s a lot of development in sustainable materials not just beneficial to the planet but also to architecture in general, as well as ways of making these materials more cost-efficient.

How do you feel about tiny houses and the tiny house movement?

From a personal standpoint, I’ve always thought that tiny houses are clever in their use of architectural space and efficiency. I enjoy seeing how they parse space and the various clever solutions for storage and cooking. It gets you to think about how much space you really need. But right now, I basically live in a 400 square foot apartment so I don’t wonder that much. However, I don’t think tiny homes are a solution to a political or social problem. My issue is the idea that they are going to solve the housing crisis. That’s just another form of austerity.

If you look at historical precedents, they had the same mentality of the tiny house. My favorite applications of tiny houses are cabins in the woods, such as the mid-century A-frames, that started from the 300-400 square foot vacation cabins of the 1960s and 1970s. [Tiny homes] really aren’t a new idea — postwar single-family suburban houses were only about 700 square feet.

Have you considered venturing into nonresidential design critique?

I’m really interested in nonresidential spaces, historically speaking. I’m also into looking at retail space and its use. I wish there was a comprehensive history of commercial spaces and multifamily housing. I’m always disappointed there isn’t a style book for these that includes chronological histories, like A Field Guide to American Houses, but for strip malls. I wish those existed as academic books. There’s still a lot of work to be done ethnography-wise and that’s exciting to me. Thus far, it has fallen into the vernacular realm, where there are people like those on this Flickr page, who have amassed tens of thousands of pictures of Kmarts and cataloged them because they have time on their hands. Being able to date or place a certain design is powerful and I would do more on it if I had more scholarly resources about it. I wish anthropology would get into that, but if push comes to shove I’ll do it myself!

Featured Image: Kate Wagner utilizes wit and humor to publish design critiques of the excessively large houses in the United States, such as this one above located in the suburbs of Los Angeles.

Kate Wagner is the creator of the viral blog McMansionHell, which roasts the world’s ugliest houses from top to bottom, all while teaching about architecture and design. Since its launch in July 2016, the blog has been featured in a wide range of publications, including the Huffington Post, Slate, Business Insider, and Paper Magazine. Outside of McMansion Hell, Kate has written for Curbed, 99 Percent Invisible, The Atlantic, Architectural Digest and more. She recently graduated from Johns Hopkins with a Masters of Arts in Audio Science, specializing in architectural acoustics. Her thesis project examined intersections of acoustics, urbanism and Late Modern architecture.

About the author: Emily Gvino is a first-year master’s student seeking dual degrees from the Department of City and Regional Planning and the Gillings School of Global Public Health. Her research interests involve how the built environment can address social justice issues and the impact of climate change and the environment on health. Prior to attending UNC, Emily earned her bachelor’s degree in urban & environmental planning and Spanish at the University of Virginia.

REPOST: Rural Studio & the 20K House

September 4, 2018 / odrozd

As a mission-driven, educational initiative, the Rural Studio has been able to commit almost a decade of rigorous analysis to the careful development of these affordable housing prototypes, illustrating the important potential of community design to explore ideas and provide services that the private market is unable to support.

In 1968, civil rights leader Whitney M, Young Jr. addressed the National Convention of the American Institute of Architects. Mr. Young was blunt in his criticism, arguing that the profession was irrelevant due to its indifference to the most pressing social issues of the time. In response to this call to action, the community design movement took root.

Building on early initiatives such as the Architects Renewal Committee of Harlem and ideas of advocacy planning, community design drew in not only architects but also planners and others interested in more participatory, democratic design processes. The movement was based on the idea that the built environment has far-reaching impacts and that everyone should be involved in its design, not just those who can afford to pay for professional services.

Over the past five decades, the community design movement has continued to evolve and today is often referred to as “social impact design” or “public interest design.” While the core principles of the movement remain the same, these shifts in terminology are indicative of changes in ideology. A wide range of design initiatives now characterize the field. This interdisciplinary approach stems from the recognition that the complex issues facing communities today call for holistic, collaborative efforts.

The work of the Rural Studio is one example of the possibility of community design. Founded in 1993 and located in the Black Belt region of west Alabama, the Rural Studio is part of Auburn University’s School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape Architecture. In 2005, Rural Studio began the 20K house project; over the past decade, students have worked to design and build small houses that can be constructed for a total of $20,000, inclusive of building materials and labor by a local contractor.

To date, Rural Studio has built sixteen versions of the 20K House – with a seventeenth iteration currently underway – and Rural Studio is also working with Landon Bone Baker Architects to ensure prototypes are compliant with building codes and FHA standards as the Studio developes 20K House into a nationwide product line. As a mission-driven, educational initiative, the Rural Studio has been able to commit almost a decade of rigorous analysis to the careful development of these affordable housing prototypes, illustrating the important potential of community design to explore ideas and provide services that the private market is unable to support.

Amy Bullington is a registered architect and 2015 graduate of the Master’s of City & Regional Planning program at UNC-Chapel Hill. As part of her undergraduate work she participated in Auburn University’s Rural Studio, where she teamed with another student to design and build Christine’s House. She has lived in Raleigh since 2006 and recently joined the team at Clearscapes, a full-service design firm located in the Warehouse District. Amy received the AICP Outstanding Student Award upon graduation.

Category: Placemaking and Design (Page 1 of 6)

From Archives) How Hey Arnold inspired suburban millennials to dream about the city

Undergrads analyze UNC spaces

By Marques Wilson, Forest Schweitzer, Olivia Corriere, Bronwyn Bishop, and Joe Young

Planning When it’s Not the Point: Urban Design Fun in a Non-City-Building Videogame

By Evan King

Reading for the Job Search and the Soul Search: Capital City & Prophetic City

By Evan King

Planners as Pollinators

From the CPJ Archives: Creative Placemaking

By Andrew Whittemore

References

Can America Replicate Singapore’s Garden Cities?

By Lizzie Tong

Life in Copenhagen, a Living City

Planning, Design, and McMansions: A Conversation with Kate Wagner

REPOST: Rural Studio & the 20K House

Join our announcements list

Back Issues