Exam 2 Part 1

The city is a fact in nature, like a cave, a run of mackerel or an ant-heap. But it is also a conscious work of art, and it holds within its communal framework many simpler and more personal forms of art. Mind takes form in the city; and in turn, urban forms condition mind. For space, no less than time, is artfully reorganized in cities: in boundary lines and silhouettes, in the fixing of horizontal planes and vertical peaks, in utilizing or denying the natural site, the city records the attitude of a culture and an epoch to the fundamental facts of its existence. The dome and the spire, the open avenue and the closed court, tell the story, not merely of different physical accommodations, but of essentially different conceptions of man's destiny. The city is both a physical utility for collective living and a symbol of those collective purposes and unanimities that arise under such favoring circumstance. With language itself, it remains man's greatest work of art.

Lewis Mumford

The city, as one finds it in history, is the point of maximum concentration for the power and culture of a community. It is the place where the diffused rays of many separate beams of life fall into focus, with gains in both social effectiveness and significance. The city is the form and symbol of an integrated social relationship: it is the seat of the temple, the market, the hall of justice, the academy of learning. Here in the city the goods of civilization are multiplied and manifolded; here is where human experience is transformed into viable signs, symbols, patterns of conduct, systems of order. Here is where the issues of civilization are focused: here, too, ritual passes on occasion into the active drama of a fully differentiated and self-conscious society.

Lewis Mumford

Ebenezer Howard who came up with the idea for a Garden City that would incorporate the advantages of what two elements that he portrayed in the "three magnets" concept illustration (not depicted here). What are the two elements?

Town And Country

Jan Gehl advocates accommodating and promoting walking and bicycling as measures to make and keep cities both sustainable and healthy.

True

Two of Jane Jacobs' major contributions to understanding and planning cities were recognition of the role of human scale in making cities livable, and ". . . , we have to deal outright with combinations or mixtures of uses, not separate uses, as the essential phenomena."

True

A good city landscape and good public transportation system are two sides of the same coin. The quality of journeys to and from stops and stations has a direct bearing on the efficiency and quality of public transportation systems. The total journey from home to destination and back must be seen in its entirety. Good walking and bicycle routes and good amenities at stations are important elements — by day as well as by night — for ensuring comfort and a feeling of security.

Jan Gehl

Giving higher priority to pedestrian and bicycle traffic would change the profile of the transport sector and be a significant element in overall sustainable policies. Pedestrian and bicycle traffic use fewer resources and affect the environment less than any other form of transport. Users supply the energy, and this form of transport is cheap, near-silent and nonpolluting. Pedestrian and bicycle traffic does not crowd city space.

Jan Gehl

In old cities almost all traffic was by foot. Walking was the way to get around, the way to experience society and people on a daily basis. City space was meeting place, market place and movement space between the various functions of the city. The common denominator was travel by foot.

Jan Gehl

What technological inventions do Joel Kotkin (2005) and William Mitchell (1999) say are destroying distance and increasing the decentralization of urban functions? (Check all that apply) Hint: Keep the dates of their readings in mind.

-Global digital communication data/information transmission -Electronic digital processing (computers)

Jan Gehl's concern for Social Sustainability and providing places for social interaction parallels with (i.e., is similar to) which four of these authors? Hint: look at the Table of Contents of the PPE Reader for clues. (Select just four.)

-Jane Jacobs -Ray Oldenburg -James Howard Kunstler -Delores Hayden

Social sustainability is a large and challenging concept. Part of the focus is to give various groups in society equal opportunities for accessing common city space and getting around town. Equality gets a substantial boost when people can walk and bicycle in combination with public transport. People without cars must have access to what the city has to offer and the opportunity for a daily life unrestricted by poor transport options. Social sustainability also has a significant democratic dimension that prioritizes equal access to meet "others" in public space. A general prerequisite here is easily accessible, inviting public space that serves as an attractive setting for organized as well as informal meetings.

Jan Gehl

Jane Jacobs asserted that to "generate exuberant diversity in a city's streets and districts, four conditions are indispensable." She said that "The necessity for these four conditions is the most important point this book (Life and Death of Great American Cities) has to make." What are the four conditions?

-Most blocks must be short; that is, streets and oppourtunities to turn corners must be frequent. -the district, and indeed as many of its internal parts as possible, must serve more than one primary function; preferably more than two -The district must mingle buildings that vary in age and condition, including a good proportion of old ones so that they vary in the economic yield they must produce. -There must be a sufficiently dense concentration of people for whatever purposes they may be there

Continuing to examine the IISD definition of sustainability, Dr. Cohen stated that the definition also embodies "the idea of limitations imposed by the state of technology and social organization on the environment's ability to meet present and future needs." Three examples of limitations imposed by social organization are:

-North Korea's frequently recurring food shortages, partially due to authoritarian and bureaucratic style of government -Famine in Yemen due to Civil War -Urban food deserts due to a community's lack of sufficient household discretionary income.

The principles underlying the creation of a lively city also support plans for social sustainability. The lively city tries to counter the trend for people to withdraw into gated communities and promotes the idea of a city that is accessible and attractive to all groups in society. The city is seen as serving a democratic function where people encounter social diversity and gain a greater understanding of each other by sharing the same city space.

Jan Gehl

"A mixture of uses, if it is to be sufficiently complex to sustain city safety, public contact and cross-use, needs an enormous diversity of ingredients. So the first question — and I think by far the most important question— about planning cities is this: How can cities generate enough mixture among uses — enough diversity — throughout enough of their territories, to sustain their own civilization?"

Jane Jacobs

"The diversity, of whatever kind, that is generated by cities rests on the fact that in cities so many people are so close together, and among them contain so many different tastes, skills, needs, supplies, and bees in their bonnets."

Jane Jacobs

The International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) defines Sustainability as: "Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs." This definition embodies some issues of equity, not just intergenerational, but also intragenerational and geographical. Dr. Cohen noted that "the concept of needs, in particular the essential needs of the world's poor, to which overriding priority should be given;". Looking at Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, what level of needs would be considered essential and given priority?

-Psychological -Safety

According Frederick J, Osborn, there are eight (8) components of Ebenezer Howard's Garden City concept. Which of the following is not one of those elements?

-Relocation loans and grants for displaces property owners -creation of new railway companies -Connecting sister garden cities with limited access multilane highways

"New urbanist" architects, planners, and developers, for example, often speak convincingly about the need for city green space, historical preservation, and environmental stewardship. Yet unlike the Victorian era progressives, who shared similar concerns, they rarely refer to the need for a powerful moral vision to hold cities together. . . . . . Without a widely shared belief system, it would be exceedingly difficult to envision a viable urban future. Even in a postindustrial era, suggested Daniel Bell, the fate of cities still revolves around "a conception of public virtue" and the "classical questions of the polis."

Joel Kotkin

Even the most evolved "global cities" now find the advantages of scale diminished by the rise of new technologies that, in the words of the anthropologist Robert McC. Adams, have accomplished "an awesome technological destruction of distance."

Joel Kotkin

In the end, a great city relies on those things that engender for its citizens a peculiar and strong attachment, sentiments that separate one specific place from others. Urban areas, in the end, must be held together by a consciousness that unites their people in a shared identity.

Joel Kotkin

To avoid the pitfalls of an ephemeral future, cities must emphasize those basic elements long critical to the making of vital commercial places. A busy city must be more than a construct of diversions for essentially nomadic populations; it requires an engage~ and committed citizenry with a long-term financial and familial stake in the metropolis. A successful city must be home not only to edgy clubs, museums, and restaurants, but also co specialized industries, small businesses, schools, and neighborhoods capable of regenerating themselves for the next generation.

Joel Kotkin

In the early part of Lewis Mumford's "Introduction" to his book "The Culture of Cities" he addresses the question of "What is a City" in somewhat poetic ode style. Within the body of the Introduction, he says the city is: Product of the Earth Product of Time Arises out of human social needs And, while a fact of nature, is a conscious act of art. As work of art and human invention, to what does he compare the city?

Language

Once again, we need to innovate to reinvent public places, towns, and cities for the twenty first century. And that's not all. Digital communication also remakes the traditional rhythms of daily life. Mindwork no longer demands legwork. Commerce isn't impeded by distance. Community doesn't have to depend on propinquity. Links among people are formed in hitherto unimaginable ways.

William Mitchell

The buildings, neighborhoods, towns, and cities that emerge from the unfolding digital revolution will retain much of what is familiar to us today. But superimposed on the residues and remnants of the past, like the newer neural structures over that old lizard brain of ours, will be a global construction of highs-peed telecommunications links, smart places, and increasingly indispensable software.

William Mitchell

This latest layer will shift the functions and values of existing urban elements, and radically remake their relationships. The resulting new urban tissues will be characterized by live/work dwellings, twenty-four-hour neighborhoods, loose-knit, far-flung configurations of electronically mediated meeting places, flexible, decentralized production, marketing and distribution systems, and electronically summoned and delivered services. This will redefine the intellectual and professional agenda of architects, urban designers, and others who care about the spaces and places in which we spend our daily lives.

William Mitchell

Garden Cities as proposed by Ebenezer Howard were designed to be totally self-sufficient and free of connection and contact with a central city.

False

In a short video clip, about Lewis Mumford's ideas we learned the following: The "City" during a period of rapid transformation during the Industrial Revolution, when old cities grew quickly, new cities sprang up in the countryside, and the wealthy fled to the countryside, neglecting the health and prosperity of those who stayed behind, while experiencing increasing social isolation and bland consumerism of 20th century suburbs. Mumford was critical of reducing land to a mere commodity, and the displacement of existing neighborhoods with housing that is and cannot become a real community. Suburbs are not a viable alternative to the poverty in urban areas. "By building communities for only one stage of life we have produced a isolation from the realty more complete than in the smallest village or drabbest industrial town." The city needs the open space and area for activities found in suburbs. Suburbs need the cultural activity and social cohesion found in the city. These observations and criticisms are similar to what other authors and commentators that we have studied? (Check all that apply.)

-Richard Rothstein -Adam Conover -Anthony Flint -Dolores Hayden -James Howard Kunstler -Thomas Hylton -Ray Oldenburg

In 1995, 5 years, before Thomas Hylton completed the video (Save Our Land, Save Our Towns), he wrote a book entitled Save Our Land, Save Our Towns: A Plan for Pennsylvania. In that book he identified "Ten Rules for Quality Community" that he thought critical. The importance and presence of these rules are implicitly evident in the film. Which of the following are one of the ten rules? Select all that apply.

-Transit-friendly design; with alleys and parking lots to the rear -Sense of place -Self-contained neighborhoods and diversity -Outdoor rooms and trees -Maintenance and safety -Human scale and Human Architecture