(2009-07-01) Gruber Four Urbanisms

Frank Gruber thinks there are 3 conventionally described "urbanisms":

• New Urbanism
• Everyday Urbanism is a much smaller but still influential theoretical framework that arose from the work of three urban planners all then based in Los Angeles: Margaret Crawford, John Chase and John Kaliski. In their 1999 book Everyday Urbanism they celebrate vernacular architecture and the coping tactics of street life. The Everyday Urbanists deny having a specific urban design practice that determines any particular results; they focus instead on process -- the involving of local residents in design decision-making -- with the goal of creating an inclusive, democratic, non-dogmatic urbanism that would improve the quality of neglected urban environments.
• The third movement Prof. Kelbaugh has defined is what he calls "PostUrbanism," but which I believe can be more descriptively (and accurately) labeled as "SpecTacle Urbanism." This is the city-building around the world associated with "star" architects (or "starchitects" if you want to be negative about it) who have designed mega-projects in such places as Beijing or Dubai. The ideas of Post Urbanism are most associated with RemKoolhaus, who writes as well as designs.
• My problem with these three urbanisms is that they do not describe what I see as the best examples of city building occurring today. Nor do I see the good examples of urbanism today arising simply from an ad hoc response to circumstances. In Part 2 of this piece I'll go in search of a Fourth urbanism.

He finds it in redevelopment work in 3 cities: Santa Monica, Barcelona, and Vancouver. The developments in all three cities are based on cities being able to maximize and capture the economic value of city real estate. They all represent intensification of uses. The developments have expensive features: most notably, they could not exist in the forms they take if they couldn't justify putting Parking underground. The economics of all three places are ultimately based on the fact that post-industrial economies can put more jobs on fewer square feet than can industrial economies, and all three cities -- as opposed to other devastated industrial cities -- have been able to capture that value (which in most late 20th century places escaped to suburban office parks) and convert freed-up extra land to high-value residences. This has taken purposeful governmental action which itself has to be seen as part of this urbanism.

He calls it Cityism. Where Cityism departs from Everyday Urbanism is that Cityists are not content to leave the public to its everyday devices. They don't romanticize the kind of urban disorder that Everyday Urbanists can celebrate, but which drives people out of the city as soon as they have the means to move. Cityists believe that investment and proactive design can make places better for everyday living, whether the public knows that ahead of time or not.

He notes the practical importance of underground Parking. I much prefer Nathan Lewis' anti-AutoMobile Traditional City thinking.

He thinks that macro Public Policy has more importance on development patterns than than Urban Planning model. The choices -- or, rather the choices not made -- did have this effect: if governmental policies had favored cooperative (CoOp) apartments in towers within the city, or other forms of housing in the city for the Middle Class, instead of Single Family Home-s in the Suburb-s, the history of the post-war city would have been different.