“Americans are too impatient. They expect instant beauty. But they forget that cities are not built in one day. We may spend years agonizing over a renewal project and then we expect the city to be rebuilt instantly. Can you imagine what Paris must have looked like when Baron Haussmann finished with it? The social and cultural shock must have been tremendous. It’s like surgery; it takes a long time for the tissue around a wound to heal. The city has to echo life. If our life is rough and tumble, so is the city. I’ve always felt that ugliness with vitality is tolerable. The great danger our cities face today is that their vitality will be sapped by too much concern for instant beauty. New York is not a beautiful city. It may even be ugly, but it is exciting. It draws beauty from its vitality. If you drove all the residents out and made it a gleaming commercial center, it would only be beautiful in a narrow sense. It would be lifeless, and therefore intolerable.”

- I.M. Pei, consulting architect of OKC’s 1965 Urban Renewal Plan

(via Steve Lackmeyer)

• Urban Sketchers
  Urban Sketchers (USk) is a network of artists around the world who draw the cities where they live and travel to. We have this blog, which is by invitation, and a Flickr group where anyone can share their location drawings. USk was started by Seattle journalist and illustrator Gabriel Campanario.
  (tags: sketch urban urban.design rendering drawing)
• The Journal Record: Coalition Opposes MAPS 3
  The [Not This MAPS] group is opposing the $777 million, seven-year, penny sales tax issue mainly because of what the package of capital improvement projects doesn’t have: more emergency response personnel, said Phil Sipe, president-elect of the International Association of Firefighters Local 157 and chairman of the coalition. Not This Maps Coalition otherwise supports MAPS 3.
  But if the issue is passed by voters Dec. 8, he said, the likelihood of securing additional funding to hire firefighters and police officers any time in the next several years severely decreases. So the group is trying to convince city leaders to postpone the question to allow for more consideration.

  “We still hold out hope that we can come to some kind of last-minute resolution of the staffing issues that we have,” Sipe said. “So we’re not entirely resigned about running a campaign against it…

  (tags: maps3 okc oklahoma.city not.this.maps)

Just found out that Geoff Parker, local architect and sketch master, has started posting some of his work on the web.  I have known Geoff for some time and am a fan of both the person and the talent.  His stuff is very cool!  I wanted to repost it all, but settled on this analytique and figured if you want more you can visit his blog and see for yourself.

SEE MORE SKETCHES

This morning, I read this old article at OKC Central about a architecture critic’s visit to Oklahoma City and comments on the City’s efforts back in the 1960s through 1980s with interest.

While some of what the critic Hiroshi Watanabe said sounded well-reasoned and has proven to be largely correct (praising Bricktown, the potential of the Myriad Gardens, etc), one thing that sticks out, both in regards to the efforts of I.M. Pei that preceded the critics visit and to the comments by Watanabe on the quality of the setbacks and plazas surrounding downtown office buildings, is the influence of architectural trends and the general lack of urban understanding.  Simply put: a good architect does not necessarily equate to a good urbanist. In fact, many renowned architects are very poor urbanists with destructive tendencies when given an opportunity to work at too great a scale. Along these lines, an interesting debate has been taking place between proponents of Frank Gehry and members of the more Jane Jacobs minded (actually, more accurately, William Whyte minded) Project for Public Spaces (PPS).  The debate was sparked by a question about the quality of public space provided by Gehry buildings asked by Fred Kent, head of PPS and a recent speaker at the Oklahoma City Mayor’s Development Roundtable, at a symposium in Aspen; to which Gerhy responded, if at all, with a pompous disregard that astounded some in attendance.

In the end, a great city has to be a collective effort.  Architects certainly have a tremendous amount to contribute to the conversation and to the overall aesthetic.  Planners, urban designers, engineers, real estate developers, etc – also all have much to contribute to shaping the ultimate urban environment.  But none of these professions, or any other profession for that matter, should wholly dictate the detailed form of the urban environment at a broad scale.  Ultimately, an eclectic mix of many persons contributions; spread out over decades or centuries of the technologies and styles of generations; creates the type of city that I consider great.  In truth, I am concerned more with creating a framework that will sustain and grow a great city for a long time to come. Key decisions about the overall framework of city development have given us the cities we see today, even if we did not know the importance of those decisions at the time.    The  seventh generation approach is interesting to consider when making major decisions that will impact the historical, current, and future urban environment:

“Oren Lyons observes that the first mandate of traditional Haudenosaunee [Iroquois] chiefs is to ensure that their decision-making is guided by consideration of the welfare and well-being of the seventh generation to come:

‘What about the seventh generation? Where are you taking them? What will they have? (Lyons 1980, p. 174).’

“The seventh generation principle applies to the ancestors as well. In honoring the ancestors, one expresses gratitude to them as the seventh generation, which they kept foremost in their decision making and for whom they sacrificed.

What types of projects or policies will do the most to serve and respect future generations?  What projects and policies may hinder future generations? I have some ideas of my own, but would rather hear what you think.  Thoughts?