Urban Design

If you’ve ever worked in distressed communities, you’ve faced the dilemma that there simply is no private market for what you want to see built.  You can chip away at the problem of vacant land with thoughtful affordable housing developments or, if you’re lucky, a new recreation center but by and large, large amounts of vacancy remain and impact the psyche of those that live nearby.  So working closely with residents, and really listening, has sparked a whole new sub-discipline in our world of urban planning and design - temporary use. 

The shrinking cities movement shined a light on the potential of ad-hoc reuse and programming some time ago but so too has groups like the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society

Forgive me Olmsted, for I have sinned. I have strayed. I have coveted. I have had doubts.

I have thought about kicking urban design to the curb like a mangy puppy.

I previously lamented the apparent death of industrial use in our cities by the widespread application of terms like “post-industrial” and “rust-belt.”  While semantics is an issue, let’s not forget that design matters and, in terms of industrial use, it hasn’t seemed to matter enough in recent years.    

In times past, industrial use was often a form of pride.  Many of the hulking, multi-story industrial buildings in older cities are (still) beautiful additions to our cityscapes.  In some cities, those that went vacant have spawned a new form of urban scavenge hunting by those seeking to fuel their appreciation for our industrial past through photography and exploration.  Think as well of the WPA posters, many of which used stylized industrial themes to promote our “American” identity. 

With just two weeks to go in my second semester, I like to think that I know just about everything about being a planning student by now. But when 100+ prospective students came to our campus open house last week, an easy question stumped me:

“What about drawing?”

At first I thought she was asking if she needed to have an art background coming into school. A thousand times, no. But instead she was looking to learn how to draw as a planner, which is a much trickier proposition.

There’s just one problem with academia. Sometimes it can be so … academic.

In the interest of getting out into the world, I’m writing this post from Nawlins (nee New Orleans), where 16 other Penn planners and I are spending our weeklong spring break doffing our tops for beads and booze doing pro bono city planning work. For most of us, it’s been nothing short of a paradigm shift—and the week ain’t over yet.

From the first day of the semester, I could tell my Urban Design Methods course was going to be different from the others I've taken in planning school so far.

“Call me at home. I’m up till midnight,” the professor told us. I’m not up till midnight.

He asks us questions like, “What is your design identity?” “What three adjectives describe you as a designer?” “Who are you?” It makes grad school feel kind of like therapy. Really, really expensive therapy.