Planning from below
I think the problem with our view on urbanism is that because urbanism is a organization/ design of the city we tend to think about it as a large scale discipline when really designing a city means designing for what makes the city: people. Even when we do design for people we don’t design for all the people. We design majorly for the white male. Because this profession has long been dominated by the white male. We don’t design for the single mother who has to walk down the street with her stroller, the child living in the low income neighborhood and needs to get to school. We have a lack of diversity in our idea of urbanism and this is something that needs to change. City planning needs to take culture, economics, politics, and context into consideration and needs to relate back to the human scale, the everyday life. It should not be planned through aerial view. Whether we like it or not it is a social discipline.
Planned with the people
Love the fact that you've compared DC with Maison Medicale. part of me thinks that in places like DC, especially Shaw and H street are being developed with people in mind, but COMPLETELY in a commercial way. Those areas are 'perfect' for the emerging professional. Walk out of their apartment and Trader Joe's is on the ground level of their apartment, Starbucks is on the corner, and then there are 2 yoga studios and spin studio with in a block. But then the family a block away from the main street has to move because they can not afford the grocery store that is 2 blocks away or even a taco from the place 3 doors down from the grocery store. I agree that we are still disconnected with the people. Hopefully we can change that.
ReplyDeleteLike Dan talks about, we can't be 1,000 feet up in the air to design a personal experience. We also can't accept the general view that's typically accepted in our field, the middle aged white male. The human and varied view needs to be of greater importance.
ReplyDeleteIt is the social, cultural, and economic diversity that makes a city so vibrant and such an interesting place to live. I agree with you that in order to design these more intimate and personable spaces within the larger city fabric we need to think at a more humanistic scale. Vibrancy can not be planned in a board room full of white, middle age men, it needs to evolve on the street level through regular ‘everyday’ interactions.
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