Light on Two Sides

In “Everyday Urbanism” the urban design of cities is under scrutiny.  Many previous architects and planners are mentioned including Jane Jacobs, Christopher Alexander, Kevin Lynch, and Rem Koolhaas. Each one is analyzed and each one comes up lacking. The critique is that urban planning does not take into consideration the “human experience as the fundamental aspect of urbanism”. In the first paragraph it states that “cities are inexhaustible and contain so many overlapping and contradictory meanings - that they can never be reconciled into a single understanding.” This reveals why urban planning seems to have failed for so long. It is an incredibly complex idea. 

So, how can you design for the everyday? How can designers create naturalness and authenticity? How do you leave space for inhabitants to make their own mark? It seems nearly impossible to put all of this into one nice, neat master plan. And although most of the architects and planners mentioned were criticized, I respect them for realizing that previous urban planning attempts have failed and trying to define an alternative. I have read some of Christopher Alexander’s Pattern Language, and I found it pretty helpful and interesting. I do agree that his patterns are too specific for something as elaborate as city planning, but when thinking about design at a smaller scale, his book is a great resource. For example, Christopher Alexander tells readers to "locate each room so that it has outdoor space outside it on at least two sides, and then place windows in these outdoor walls so that natural light falls into every room from more than one direction." This idea is grand in concept, but particularly difficult to accomplish, and nearly impossible to consider at the scale of a master plan.