Urban Geography

INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION

URBANIZATION

SUBURBANIZATION

URBAN DESIGN

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Natasha BoydeMay 4, 2015

Going way back… 8th c. BC “planning” in the Roman Empire:

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Pompeii (from wikipedia)from history.co.uk

from historylink102.com

“All Roads Lead to Rome”

Physical planning, construction as an expression and consolidation of power

The power of planning to order, organize, enable civilization

Roads

Ports

Aqueducts

Fortifications/Boundaries

Common Spaces (Agora, Forum, Baths, Shrines)

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While most of the world remained rural, agricultural – ‘urban’ nodes served as centers

Transcontinental power• Constantinople is a controlled trade point

between East and West• Black Sea & Mediterranean Sea connect

Europe to Asia, N. Africa

Ottoman Empire 1299 – 1923

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Colonial, pre-Civil War US:an agricultural nation

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Eastern seaboard cities served as centers of commerce, trade; in 1800 most citizens (and many political leaders) were farmers

Industrialization (1800-1900s)

Industrial Revolution – Britain, then United States

Began with transportation (steam) then moved to industry and manufacturing (steel)

-urban nodes and settlement patterns -railroad and sea ports

-“3 mile city”-urban growth / urbanization

Industry rose from late 1800s to early 1900s

Connecticuthistory.org ushistoryscene.com

‘urban’ centers have been around for millennia…‘urbanization’ has taken hold in the last 150 years. So what is urbanization? Why did it intensify so dramatically?

“the proportion of the total population concentrated in urban settlements” (Kingsley Davis, 1965 “The Urbanization of the Human Population”

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Hulton Deutsch, encarta.msn.com

1800

Total US pop:5 million

Urban pop:300,000

6% urbanized

1900

Total US pop:76 million

Urban pop:30 million

40% urbanized

As overall population and manufacturing grew, cities became larger and denser

(Hammond, 1968)

(Sugrue 1998)(Sugrue 1998)

(Sugrue 1998)

Factors at work in US urbanization:

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• Population growth (i.e. reproduction)• Increased agricultural production

• New modes of factory production

• Cheap transportation (steamship, railroad)• Water as a resource: port cities, river cities• Immigration

While we are now more urbanized than ever before, we have never again seen population densities as high as US cities of the late 19th c. (Levy p 11)

Urban Conditions in late 19th c. America

“3 mile radius” – the distance someone can walk in an hour

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Factories, ports employ millions of workers; they all need to live within 3 miles

From Little Italy Neighbors’ Association (LINA)

From Jacob Riis, How the Other Half Lives (1890)

Sanitary Reform = Beginning of American Urban Planning American industrial cities faced severe public health threats

due to their unsanitary living conditions

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• Human waste became a serious problem due to crowding, and a lack of dedicated sewers

Up to 2,000 people per acre(Levy p12)

“private” privies in apartment yards, and/or dumping in the streets(Peterson p15)

Living conditions in factory slums became intolerable, and disease epidemics took hold

19th c. -- beginnings of government involvement• housing reform – 1867 NYC legislation

regulating tenement construction

• Public water supply and water-sewer carriage – widespread implementation in the 1870’s

Note that at its inception – from its inception, and ongoing – the American planning tradition has been reactive, not proactive

Garden Cities Major advocates:

Patrick Geddes (“survey, then plan”)

Ebenezer Howard (Garden Cities of To-Morrow)

appropriate spatial form determines social organization, quality of life

Urban Design

Architects who think big

Planners who think small

Landscape architects focused on connections

Interdisciplinary notion, central tenets are that urban form matters (volume, space); and that meso-scale matters (between the macro of regions, cities and the micro of individual buildings)

Haussmann’s Paris

Broad avenues Arrondissements The spatial

expression of a new political regime – Napoleon III – “modern, functional, rational”

Haussmann boulevards remain the backbone of Paris spatial organization

“A little bit of Paris in Philly”

Highly questionable as a successful public space

Other big names in critical/constructive urban design theory…• Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great

American Cities(1962)

• William H. Whyte, The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces (1980)

https://vimeo.com/111488563

Urban Design and Public Space

“the city is a theater of social action, and an aesthetic symbol of collective unity”

Lewis Mumford, What is a City?, p 94

But who has a right to this space??

The Militarization of Urban Space

Presidio Modelo Prison, Cuba 2005

The Panopticon prison design translated into urban design

-Surveillance in Public Space

-”The Panopticon Mall”

Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon

The Panopticon Mall

The Militarization of Urban SpaceWho has a right to urban spaces for

what kinds of uses?• Weeding out the “undesirables”

1990

2003

SF bus stop seats

The Militarization of Urban Space

The Militarization of Urban Space

Suburbanization (c. 1950s)

Automation = decline in manufacturing jobs available

labor surplus

Car Culture & Freeways

Affordable housing & property taxes

Higher standard of living

Decentralization

those who could leave did

increasing job opportunities

left low-skilled, low-mobility, low SES in the city

(Sugrue 1998)

What fed the frenzy?Things that fed the phenomenon:

RoadsZoningMortgagesBaby Boom

For half of the American population, up and out of the cities

Construction Methods

1908-1927: “Tin Lizzie”

1915:

5 million cars In the US

1930:

25 million cars In the US

By 1927, there was one car for every 5 Americans, or roughly 1 for every 2 families

Highways bought growth

Photos courtesy of Arroyo Seco Parkway Corridor plan

• Robert Moses and the greater New York parkway system• The Pennsylvania Turnpike from Harrisburg to Pittsburgh, PA• The Pasadena Freeway, Los Angeles County, CA

Planned Communities BASED ON the automobile

City Beautiful meets Garden Cities meets Henry Ford meets the American real estate market

Frank Lloyd Wright’s Broadacre City

• Beverly Hills, 1914• Palos Verdes Estates, 1923• Radburn, 1929

Decentralized, democratic, pioneering vision

Anti-urban; city as cancerous, city as prison

Individualist emphasis

Access to space, privacy for middle class homeowners

World War II

1920’s auto-oriented suburbanization trends…

post

… on crack

Highway Construction

The Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956, aka

National Interstate and Defense Highways Act

The American Dream, c.1950

Deindustrialization (1950s-1980s)

Declines in manufacturing were occurring as early as 1930s

Declines due to automation occurred on a massive scale, now coupled with outsourcing

Rust Belt – 1980s

(Hammond, 1968)

(Sugrue 1998)

ERIEP (Klier and Rubenstein 2011)

Decline of the Inner City

Decentralizationdisinvestment

Inner-city ghettos

Slum clearance and urban renewal

White flight and Urban Blight

Images of Detroit 1940 (Sugrue 1998)

How does government go about spatial planning?

PUBLIC INVESTMENT. SPENDING MONEY TO BUILD THINGS; E.G. ROADS, SCHOOLS, BRIDGES. FUNDING COMES FROM TAX REVENUE, DEBT FINANCING.

Regulation. Requiring compliance with codes, plans, mandates, targets.

Local governments plan in order to coordinate these activities within a coherent framework

Revitalization and Renewal

Gentrification

Evictions

Relocation strategies

Demolishing housing projects and blighted urban cores

Mission Anti-Displacement Coalition

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Eminent Domain

• The power of the state to take appropriate property for a public use (i.e. revitalize)

• Basis: Fifth Amendment, U.S. Constitution• Commonly called a taking, a condemnation, or

exapropriation• Just compensation = fair market value

“…[no person] shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.”

How does eminent domain work? Four kinds of “takings” – complete, partial,

temporary, and right of way/easement

• State contacts the owner, notifies them in writing, and proposes a “fair market” price

• Owner accepts and turns over deed; or, objects and negotiates an alternative price through a hearing; or

• Owner refuses and the state issues a court action, establishes and pays fair market price, and evicts the property owner (can be appealed)

Gentrification

“the restoration and upgrading of deteriorated urban property by middle-class or affluent people, often resulting in displacement of lower-income people”

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How is gentrification socially constructed in a positive way?

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• U.S. cities were in precipitous decline through the 1970’s’ gentrification is what has ‘saved’ them

• Increasing real estate values bring more tax base, services, jobs, institutional growth

• There is a transfer of wealth from richer to less-rich residents when gentrification occurs

• Gentrification uses the market, rather than government subsidy, to create a ‘rising tide’

How is gentrification socially constructed in a negative way?

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• Property owners reap the economic benefits; low income renters just get pushed out

• Developers and wealthy home owners care about themselves and their bottom line, not the good of the community

• Gentrification happens where its easiest, not where it causes the least harm

• When neighborhoods gentrify, they become less interesting, artsy, diverse, mixed-income

Spanish Harlem and Brooklyn, NYC

New Urbanism

Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU) founded in 1993; Charter ratified in 1996

“walkable, neighborhood-based development as an alternative to sprawl” from cnu.org

Leading figures are architects, designers: Peter Calthorpe, Andres Duany, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, Elizabeth Moule, Stephanos Polyzoides

What is New Urbanism?A broad-based call for

Walkability Connectivity Mixed use Mixed housing Quality architecture and urban design Neighborhood structure Density Transportation choices Sustainability Quality of life

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LRrl7LwNUtw

New Urbanism successes Gotten more Americans aware of, thinking about

design: do I really want a big house with a big yard far from work, shopping, schools, friends?

• Shifted the mode of some new “greenfield” development

• Catalyzed a conversation about transportation, the implications of our mode of choice

New Urbanism challenges Why are we still doing greenfield development,

period? What about brownfields, greyfields?

• Does new urbanism have anything to contribute to goals like economic equity, diversity?

• Has new urbanist form created stronger communities? Or is it just appealing to a market for nostalgia?

• Does new urbanism endorse and promote diverse values?

What else do we plan for? Infrastructure

Schools, hospitals

Economic development; sustainability

Population Growth

Tax base

What Can be Said of Urban Planning? People use space and place rarely according to

how they’re planned out

Long-term success?

Adaptable to technical advances?

Globalization?

Climate Change?

Questions?

Natasha Boyde, MA Geography, CSULBnats.maps@gmail.com@consciousmapshttp://consciousmaps.org