Bologna Contours of City Talk

8/2/2019 Bologna Contours of City Talk

1/38

Urban Imaginaries and

American Inll:Intercultural Place-Making

Dean Sai(aDepartment of Anthropology

University of Denver

CONTOURS OF THE CITYAn Interna8onal Conference

in memory of Giovanna Franci

Bologna, Italy, May 3-5, 2012


2/38

American thinking about urbanismlike thinking about urbanism in many othercountriesis awash in an alphabet soup of compe8ng urbanisms: among themAgrarian, Combinatory, Ecological, Landscape, and Post Urbanism. The reigningAmerican king, of course, is New Urbanism. These frameworks for imaginingthe urban future have different virtues and blind spots. They are differen8allysensi8ve to issues of culture and history, and the challenge of making place ina par8cular context.

Denvera western American city balanced on a knifes edge of environmentaland social sustainabilityhas long been considered a laboratory forimplemen8ng and evalua8ng alterna8ve models of urbanism. This talk looks atsome examples of new inll or regenera8on projects in Denvers urban coreand suburban edge with any eye toward iden8fying whats missing from theAmerican urban design discourse. The short answer is anintercultural sensibility. It iden8es what we can learn about cul8va8ng such a sensibilityfrom discourses being pioneered elsewhere, especially in Europe.

Abstract


3/38

GLOBAL CITIES/GLOBAL CITIZENSHIP: SOCIAL AND NATURALTRANSFORMATIONS OF URBAN AREAS IN EUROPE AND THE UNITED STATES

This conference honors Giovanna Francis vision and energy in helping create the Laboratorio di RicercaSulle Ci(e. My par8cular talk honors Giovanna for sparking the Atlan8s Project, a joint collabora8onbetween the ins8tu8ons iden8ed below and sponsored by the European Union and US Department ofEduca8on. This project was instrumental in s8mula8ng my interest intercultural place-making. Atlan8swebsite: h(p://por\olio.du.edu/atlant


4/38

The urbanimaginary refers toour mental orcogni7ve mappings ofurban reality and theinterpre7ve gridsthrough which we

think about,experience, evaluate,and decide to act inthe places, spaces,

and communi7es inwhich we live.


5/38

The ideas about intercultural place-makingdiscussed here have also been heavilyinuenced by the work of Phil Wood and theCouncil of Europes Intercultural Ci8es project.


6/38

The Intercultural City

Welcomes diversity ethnic, linguis8c, religious). Views diversity as an opportunity, not a problem. Adapts its services, ins8tu8ons, and governance

structures to the needs of diverse popula8ons. Proac8ve in taking ac8ons and crea8ng policies

that encourage social mixing, interac8on, andinvestment.


7/38

The Intercultural City is akinto Leonie SandercocksCosmopolis :

a city in which there isgenuine acceptance of,

connec7on with, andrespect for the culturalOther, and the possibility ofworking together onma@ers of common des7ny,the possibility of atogetherness in difference .


8/38

I especially appreciate the Intercultural Ci8es projects emphasis on the rela8onshipbetween culture and built environment, especially public space. The projectar8culates useful Ques8ons and Ac8ons regarding the rela8onship between cultureand built space.


9/38

Ive brought these various inuences together in my own web project calledIntercultural Urbanism . h(p://www.interculturalurbanism.com/


10/38

This graph explains why developing an intercultural urbanism will beincreasingly important for American ci8es in the years ahead. The increasingethnic diversity of American society will be especially evident in urban centers.


11/38

Imagine a Great City-Campaign slogan of Federico Pena, Denver Mayor 19 3-1991


12/38

Denver is na8onally known forimplemen8ng New Urban approaches toimagining, and regenera8ng, the city. NewUrbanism advocates the restructuring ofpublic policy and development prac8ces tosupport the following principles:

neighborhoods should be diverse inuse and popula on;

communi8es should be designed forthe pedestrian and public transit aswell as the car; i.e., dedicated tosmartgrowth ;

ci8es and towns should be shaped by

physically dened and universallyaccessible public spaces andcommunity ins tu ons ;

urban places should be framed byarchitecture and landscape design thatcelebrate local history, climate,ecology, and building prac ce .


13/38

Old Europe Elizabeth Elkin, Oakville Ontario)

Cri cs of New Urbanism Ques on itsNewness.

Much of what it recommends overlaps with

European Old Urbanism.

what is claimed as new withinnew urbanism is in reality old. It re-creates and reies yet again a vision inwhich Chicana/o urbanism has novalue. What is being advocated is, inreality, everyday barrio life.

-David Diaz, 2005.


14/38

#1. StapletonAirport

Prac cing New Urbanism:Three Denver Regenera on Schemes

All seek to reconnectrela8vely big spacesto the establishedstreet grid, and toregenerate thosespaces inconformance withNew Urbanist designprinciples.


15/38

These images exemplify Stapletonsredevelopment as a mixed use, architecturally-variable, green community.


16/38

Park Crescent, London

Crescent Lo stop right) and

29 th Avenue,Denver

Stapleton also displays atouch of what Spiro Kostofcalls The Grand Manner: aset of baroque planningprinciples that emphasizegeometric order and formalvistas.


17/38

#2. Elitch GardensAmusement Park

Before

A er: Highland Gardens Village


18/38

Highland Gardens Village

Pitched Roof and Front Porch Aesthe8c Preserved Carousel

Preserved Theatre


19/38

#3. Villa Italia Mall1965-2001). At its

opening it was thelargest suburbanmall west of Chicago.


20/38

The Villa Italia site today.Known as Belmar, its intendedto provide a new downtown forsuburban Lakewood. Itssurrounding community islargely Hispanic in ethniccomposi8on.


21/38

Belmars Neo-Modern or American Mercan8leAesthe8c

Lo s

Plaza Alley

Housing


22/38

Block 7 Ar8st Galleries


23/38

Evalua ng Denvers New Urbanism

In fall 2011 my Culture and The City class which included Atlan8s exchangestudents from England and Italy as well as students from the Czech Republic and

Liberiawas assigned the task of analyzing Denvers New Urban developments. Theguiding ques8on was whether these regenera8on projects achieve their aims andcontribute to intercultural place-making. The results are fully reported on theIntercultural Urbanism blog and very briey summarized in the slides that follow.


24/38

Denvers New Urbanism has mixed appeal for a diverse group ofinterna onal Millennials (American, English, Italian, Czech, African)

-European students overwhelmingly preferred Highlands Garden Village.American students narrowly preferred Belmar.

-These preferences suggest that New Urbanism is on the right track interms of appealing to at least Western Anglo and Con7nental interculturaltastes and values.

However, a rac ng and mixing ethnic groups is another ma er altogether.The built form of Denvers New Urban developments, their retailestablishments and adver sing, their housing prices, and their lack ofseamless integra on with surrounding neighborhoods s ll signal to all

studentswhite upper/middle class homogeneity and exclusivity .

-my one Hispanic student reluctantly threw in with Belmar. My oneAfrican Liberia) student hated all three New Urban developments equally.


25/38

These results raise the ques8on of whether New Urbanism cansucceed in accomplishing, at the same 8me, its diversity andcivic engagement community-building) goals.

One student ques oned whether New Urbanism is capable ofproducing an intercultural city at all. As she put it, perhaps an

intercultural city already exists in the urban fabric and justneeds some poking and proddingusing other varie es ofurbanism as a guideto draw it out.


26/38

Minimally, there was a fairly good consensus

that architects and planners interested inintercultural city-building must eitherstructure space so that different cultures

might see and use it in a variety of ways, orcreate more open-ended spaces to which abroad variety of intercultural Others canadapt.


27/38

One of my current interests is to chronicle another regenera8on project at 9 th

Avenue and Colorado Boulevard in Denver. This is the former site of the Universityof Colorados Health Sciences Center. Im studying the projects planningdocuments and also engaging in a li(le urban ethnography by a(endingcommunity mee8ngs at which city planners, ci8zens, and site developers meet.Observa8ons are fully reported on the Intercultural Urbanism blog.


28/38

Images of the exis8ng hospital site. All of this will be demolished.


29/38

A small piece of this historic, 1920s Nurses Dorm along with its adjacentgrassy quadrangle will be preserved as the social heart of the site.


30/38

Map of the proposedand s8ll un-nameddevelopment. Thepreserved Nurses Dormwill house retail andoffice space on thenorth side of the publicsquare center). Thelarge retail store at

upper le will be a100,000 square footBig Box store thatwill be the anchortenant for the site.Residen8al buildings

for mul8-familyhousing are at lowerright.


31/38

Urban DesignStandards and

Guidelines reectNew Urbanistplanning principles.


32/38

Conceptual renderings feature pedestrian-oriented design and ground oortransparency that allows a closer connec8on between the buildings and street.


33/38

Parking lots will be concealed. This will likely prevent

development of informal economies e.g., foodtrucks) important to some barrio cultures.

O f i l l b i i h h i


34/38

One worry for an intercultural urbanist is that the mainsquare will end up looking like a place thats more investedin 8dy Grand Manner visual order rather than messycosmopolitan interac8on e.g., Place des Vosges, Paris,early 1600s)


35/38

Renderings of the Big Box Store also have a Neo-Modern cast. These examples of BigBox design from ci8es around the United States) range from the banal upper le ) tothe more adventurous lower right)..

A hit t d Pl M ki g


36/38

Ive suggested to the developer thatsomething different would beappropriate for the Big Box at 9th and

Colorado. An exposed skeletonstructure like Paris Centre GeorgesPompidou would honor the siteshistoric use as a hospital and also likelymake for an interes8ng conversa8onpiece. As Sco( Doyon, a New Urbanist,

percep8vely suggests:

(Memorable visual events) make ourcommuni7es more interes7ng, andinteres7ng places engage people at amore in7mate, emo7onal level. When

we talk of making places more pedestrian friendly , we o9en focus onsidewalks, road geometries anddiversity of des=na=ons but its lesso9en that we also focus on delight the visual candy that engages our sensesas we travel from point A to point B.

Architecture and Place Making


37/38

Alterna8vely, something like the Idea Store in Whitechapel, London a building thatin8mately connects to its context and that also a(racts an ethnically diverse userpopula8onwould also work for the Big Box.

What will happen at 9th and Colorado remains to be seen. In June 2012 Ill travel to


38/38

To what extent should buildings and urban spaces be designed to be generic, orspecic to par8cular users and their cultural predilec8ons?

How should new public, commercial and residen8al buildings and public spaces

take account of different lifestyles and cultural prac8ces?

To what extent can/should urban design a(empt to inuence interculturalengagement?

How to prepare aspiring urban designers and other place-making professionals tof 8 i i l l ld?

INTERCULTURAL CITIESSeminar on Intercultural urban planning and place-making

Universit IUAV di Venezia, 21/22 June 2012

What will happen at 9 and Colorado remains to be seen. In June 2012 I ll travel toVenice to par8cipate in this Intercultural Ci8es seminar. I hope to learn more abouthow the arts of architecture and design and can serve the objec8ves of InterculturalUrbanism.

Bologna Contours of City Talk

Documents

Transcript of Bologna Contours of City Talk