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06 Mar 08

Placemaking « Stephen Rees’s blog

Stephen Rees blogs Jan Gehl's talk at the Gateway Theatre, Richmond February 28, 2008. Found via Gordon Price ("Pricetags"), otherwise I would have missed this excellent summary (and a great comments thread, too). Coincidentally, I also watched Andres Duany's very engaging talk, "On the Edge," from January 16/08 on the SFU "City Program" site (video here: http://www.sfu.ca/city/city_pgm_video014.htm). It's a bit disconcerting to think that but for a fluke, I could have missed both these items. I don't remember seeing Gehl's lecture announced, and I didn't see any media follow-ups anywhere else. Duany's lecture I knew about, but missed that a video of same was available. Well, better late than never, I guess...

stephenrees.wordpress.com/...placemaking - Preview

jan_gehl lectures place_making reference stephen_rees urbanism

When Professor Gehl first graduated, architects were big and arrogant and people were small and insignificant. Modernists thought streets were bad. They designed towers in the grass. Most schools of architecture didn’t talk about people – and many still don’t. They were led astray by Art: it looks good in a magazine but people won’t use it. That was forty years ago, and then after studying it for a long time people started asking him how it should be done, so he started a consulting firm eight years ago: they call themselves “urban quality consultants”.
During the car invasion of the 1950s planners and politicians panicked. They thought that the purpose of life is to have more cars. Cities were designed for cars and parking.
10 more annotations...
- All city planning then was about the capacity of roads and parking. Every city has a department for traffic engineers. Is there a city department for pedestrians and public life? Does anybody know anything about people?
  - - right, and I guess Duany's additonal question would be, 'why do we need the traffic OR pedestrian experts in the first place?' Shouldn't planners be well-rounded and generalist enough that they can approach problems from multiple perspectives, vs. ONLY from, say, a traffic engineering p.o.v.? - on 2008-03-06
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- “People are an endangered species.”
  - - Duany said the same thing, specifically castigating environmentalists who continue to advocate for every species EXCEPT people/humans, and who insist on seeing humanity as the problem. His take was that it's specifically the North-American-originated middle-class way of life that's the problem, not people as such. That particular group he links strongly with suburbs, not with rural or urban life. - on 2008-03-06
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- - THAT is hilarious... - on 2008-03-06
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- He has found nine cities including Barcelona, Lyons, Strasbourg, Curitiba – and each has the necessary qualities - lively, attractive, safe, sustainable and healthy. And they did this by putting the emphasis on walking and bicycling.
  - I remember Strasbourg from the late 70s and early 80s, when cars still clotted the old town, and then seeing it after cars were banned from many of those narrow old streets. What a difference. When I was 17, I went to Paris by myself, and, sitting in a sidewalk cafe, I clearly thought, "The car has killed this city." That was over 30 years ago, but it seems Paris is FINALLY starting to realize that it needs to get a grip on the problem. - on 2008-03-06
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- The shift in emphasis has been from market to meeting. People come downtown to see what is going on. The city is a destination in its own right. We are now an experience oriented society, but due to family fission and smaller homes if you want to see other people, you have to get out of the house. We want the kind of quality we see when we go on holiday in our own city. People leave the underpopulated suburbs to come into city, not seeking out greenery but the company of other people.”Life is too short to go on holidays”.
- He told the story of the man who found a skunk in his basement. He tried to encourage it to leave by setting out a trail of breadcrumbs to the woods. Next day he had two skunks in the basement.
  - :-) - on 2008-03-06
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- Q, In Vancouver we currently have the notion that density alone will cause these changes to happen
  
  A. You have to be proactive. It has to be wider concept – “clever density” – do not take out the sun and make it windy – no one can see what is going on on the street 50 floors up. Senseless density won’t help – “high rise is the lazy architect’s solution to density” – you need “sensitivity in density”
  - - hmm, I think I prefer Duany's concept of the transect... - on 2008-03-06
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- Q – shared space streets -
  
  A – While the plan is to move that way, Gehl likes pedestrian priority better than shared streets. He was against the idea of traffic sign free streets being tried in Holland. He was very critical of that way to doing it – “people should be free of worry”. We need quality in how people feel about it, not just accident statistics.
  - - again, transects: that idea wouldn't work in every situation, but in some urban and in some rural areas, as well as small towns, it can work. - on 2008-03-06
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- q – gentritfication?
  
  a – There is no smart answer to that. When you improve the area new people move in. This should not stand in the way of improving cities. You also need a social policy. Bogota used transit as social policy providing good transit not more roads for cars improves the lot of the poor.
- At the end of the evening Professor Gehl wanted to present a copy of one of his books to the Mayor of Richmond. There was no Mayor to take the book – nor any councillors. Only a rather junior member of the planning staff. It was explained to me that there had been a day long briefing by Prof Gehl of the staff, but again no politicians attended.
  - Ha! - on 2008-03-06
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