A Lecture to Query Urban Design

Background

This blog-post first appeared as a lecture/ lecture notes to an urban design studio at UBC in early 2015. The class’ focus was Vancouver’s Broadway Corridor, particularly East Broadway which roughly stretches from Main Street to Commercial Drive.

There is an expectation for urban design studios (as with much of the urban design profession) to apply the ‘right’ kinds of typology for various neighbourhoods or streets. Besides the ‘right’ kinds of typology we are also often too eager to prescribe for these neighbourhoods and streets a set of universal principles that are supposed to work from Copenhagen to Sydney to Kuala Lumpur to Vancouver. More often than not, these principles will prescribe the precise character and massing of the ‘right’ building typologies and street morphologies.

With this lecture, I wanted the studio to go beyond the application of those pre-established good building typologies mentioned above. Here, I will not present on what Broadway should be, or even what is good urban design. Rather, I will present three interrelated ways to think about urban design that I hope will help the studio re-reiterate and re-construct the event, the space and the time that is East Broadway. The main gist is to not just see urban design as a tool, but to query urban design itself.

The three ways to query about urban design are:

•  To elaborate urban design as a practice of making connections
• To enquire what creates a location
• To cultivate the habits of a reflective practitioner

#1: Urban Design, a practice of making connections

Where and when is Broadway

All too often we approach a city as just a spatial entity. The things we build in SketchUp and AtuoCAD, even the renderings to illustrate how things might look seem to be locked in an unchanging slice of time. In doing so, we often forget that what conditions space when, in fact, what makes space spatial, what makes space traversable and thus liveable is the element of time itself. (I shall elaborate on this notion later.) As such, to enquire about Broadway is to ask “where” and “when” is Broadway, to probe its spatial and temporal dimensions, to see how its space and time are inseparable.

Let us begin with “where”, the spatial question. A reductive and utilitarian-oriented answer is that Broadway is a 15km east-west corridor linking UBC to Burnaby and beyond. It is the home of the famous B-Line bus that takes students to and fro UBC. The central portion of it, between Yukon and Burrard Streets, is a key economic locale outside the downtown core. But, Broadway is more than this. Broadway cuts through many established neighbourhoods. It also runs through some lacklustre blocks that nonetheless might establish themselves into significant areas one day. It also intersects many north-south streets, some of which have socio-historical importance that rival Broadway. Main Street, for instance, is narrower and shorter than Broadway, but to study the Main-Broadway junction is to necessarily embark on a rigorous examination of Main Street and Kingsway and many other north-south streets in the area. Each of the neighbourhoods Broadway intersects distinguishes its own spatial identity with a unique political, socio-economic outlook. One can see how Commercial Drive and Kitsilano may both have high numbers of university students, but there is also a sense the two neighbourhoods have different socio-political allegiances. To ask where is to acknowledge Broadway as a connection of differences.

How does the temporal dimension factor in this connection of differences? Let us start with a rather simple relationship between time and space. When one travels from Point A to Point B that journey is always conducted over time. But Points A and B, insofar as they exist in time, are not static entities. Person A from Point A may have certain ill impressions of Point B, but in the time it takes Person A to travel to Point B, Point B may have transformed so significantly that Person A will develop favourable impressions of Point B. During his journey Person A might have also read new literature discussing the merits of Point B leading him to re-evaluate his own misgivings toward Point B. And, let us assume Points A and B are two neighbourhoods along Broadway, is it not possible that neighbourhoods and our impressions of these neighbourhoods can change in time? I was told by some Vancouverites who have been here longer than me that Kitsilano was once a hippy, working class neighbourhood; today it has a higher household income than most other neighbourhoods.

From the perspective of space each neighbourhood is different from each other. But, adding in the perspective of time, each neighbourhood is differing from itself (its past and even its present) in time. The process of differing from itself may indeed by slow enough as to be imperceptible, but this process remains perpetual.[1]

A neighbourhood’s present [2] is always connected to its past and future. From a unified spatio-temporal perspective a neighbourhood past, present and future is also interlinked to other neighbourhoods’ pasts, presents and futures. (See Figure #1) To ask “where” is thus necessarily to ask “when”, to enquire how various neighbourhoods are transforming internal and collaboratively/collectively in time.

Figure #1: Diagram showing spatio-temporal connections between neighbourhoods.
This diagram is simplified to just two neighbourhoods for the purpose of graphic representation. Time is chronologised here for simplicity.

A Framework for Making Connections

Urban design is a practice of speculating what the future might become. As discussed above, we look at how a neighbourhood or city’s past, present and future are connected. More precisely, we look at how the past and present can be harnessed into a framework for future transformations. But, it is of utmost importance to remember the past and present do not dictate the future.

What do we mean by the past and present not dictating the future?

• First, the future is never completely chartable: The plan necessarily deviates from itself insofar as the urban condition is not in a bell-jar. Urban design must always make contingencies, fore-planned and adaptively, for the unexpected to add to the rich spatio-temporal fabric of neighbourhoods and cities.
• Second, the future cannot repeat the past and present: Urban design must necessarily resist romanticising the past and even the present.[3] Why? As much as we have tendencies to ‘remember’ our cities as being better before, the past and even present can be fraught with destructive power relations that give rise to inequalities and inadequacies.[4] Often these destructive power relations are well hidden and even appear benevolent. Urban design-ing is to partly critique these destructive power relations, even as they exist within or constitute established urbanism models, so as to begin to craft land-use, built-form, and community development guidelines that can dismantle and rebuild them into spatial-temporal expressions that foster justice (while also making contingencies for the unexpected).

The operative question is:

• What connections are you going to make to foster productive power relations so that different persons, different communities and neighbourhoods can partake in shared and perpetual transformation, while resisting homogenisation and inter/intra-neighbourhood antagonisms?[5]

#2: What creates a Location?

The Case of Heidegger’s Bridge

More often than not a neighbourhood’s identity is framed as not being another neighbourhood, so much so that antagonisms toward those other neighbourhoods develop implicitly and explicitly. This amounts to the act of Othering. Simply put, Othering is placing negative attributes on another entity so as to foster a sense of positive self-worth.[6]

To illustrate this Othering, let me give the curious and sometimes tense relations between Mainland Chinese and overseas-born Chinese[7]. I have personally witnessed ethnic Chinese family friends complain about how the Mainland Chinese are rude, inflating real estate prices, incapable/unwilling to speak English and many other charges. At a recent family event, one of them – a Singapore Chinese who lives half his time in Vancouver, and half in Singapore – mentioned to me that the Mainlanders are destroying the true Vancouver. How does Othering of the Mainland Chinese have a spatio-temporal dimension? This assumption that Mainlanders are destroying Vancouver is based on another assumption, one that believes Vancouver to have “always been like that.” This is to say the location that is Vancouver is treated as a given rather than one that is created and transformed over time.

The claim to a location often neglects that locations are always created and in a process of differing-from-itself. Locations have never “always been like that.” For instance, a mountain is always going to be just a mountain until humankind gives it a name, builds a national park or ski-run on it, and preserves a view of it through view-protection by-laws. The mountain as a location is a creation. German Philosopher Martin Heidegger gives the example of how the construction of a bridge creates location. He wrote,

The location is not already there before the bridge is. Before the bridge stands, there are of course many spots along the stream that can be occupied by something. One of them proves to be a location, and does so because of the bridge. Thus the bridge does not first come to a location to stand in it; rather, a location comes into existence only by virtue of the bridge.[8]

A spot becomes a location because of use and significance. A location is an artifice rather than something that has “always been like that” or “always been there.” A bridge might be built to connect the two closest points on either side of the river. Over time, rest stops may be built on either side of the bridge; these rest stops might become small housing which in turn could become villages that eventually become cities. The rest stops might not even be locations, but at some point of their growth significance is gained and locations take place in time. More importantly, the significance associated with these locations is differing-from-itself. Like spots along a river, junctions along Broadway necessarily change over time as street corners come to accommodate plazas, higher densities, greater pedestrian movement, varying demographics and so forth. From a spatio-temporal perspective, a location has an essence that we cannot wholly represent, especially when we consider its futurity.

Urban design is very much a practice of creating locations. Specifically, we create the guidelines and policies, the framework, for locations to take place. Guidelines and policies are like Heidegger’s bridge, a catalyst for locations to take shape. And very often we make new locations out of existing locations by modifying or emphasising certain traits about these existing locations. For example, by adding wider footpaths across a popular grassy knoll, and re-grading parts of it we begin to identify and rework some past inadequacies so that persons of all abilities may be able to use that grassy knoll. Transformation does not have to denote loss; it can be a gain toward diverse new experiences for more people.

The operative questions here are:

• What are some spots or locations along Broadway that you can create new locations?
• What other locations does a particular location connect up to?
• How does a location connect to its past, and how will its past be transformed?

#3: Being a Reflective Practitioner

From Know-How to Know-Why

Why do we want to ask questions about locations and the connections a location or place has to other places and other temporalities? This question might be addressed by asking why it is important to ask why.

We designers are surely capable of producing results that win our clients’ praises. We know how to employ certain typologies and rules of thumb that prove to meet certain criteria.[9] But we often do not ask why we are choosing certain building typologies other than the fact those we have chosen seem to be a la mode today.

To make urban design more than a technical exercise committed only to repetition, one might have to unravel some of the frameworks that enable or constraint the way we work. And often there can be frameworks we use that we think are liberating and helping us but are in fact inhibiting us. To ask why is to reflect. As educationist Donald Schön suggests, by moving from a tacit, technical knowledge of design toward a more reflective critical process, we have to query why we choose certain normative values over others. We have to also ask why we even want to begin with normative values in the first place.[10]

Likewise, sociologist Michael Crotty noted that it is important to trace out the theoretical (along with political and ideological) perspectives that construct the lens from which we see the world. A theoretical perspective may consist of a set of concepts and theories that are grounded within certain historical, cultural and/or social milieu.[11] Why do we align with certain milieus? What power relations made up of what kinds of productive and/or destructive forces bind us to those milieus? Why should we retain or expel these alliances, and by doing either what might happen? Asking “why” entails asking “what if” and “so what”.

Of course the questions can be endless (as with all philosophical discussions). But, this move toward the “why” requires a certain daringness to reflect on and challenge ourselves, question stagnant loyalties and even some urban design hero figures we had placed on pedestals. By daring to move from simply knowing-how to knowing-why we might encounter forces and voices that were muted due to certain destructive power relations we had previously been aligned with. By making this move we might become more enabled to assess our situation and devise ways to make new alliances, perhaps even create our own models for urbanism. In asking why, we creatively dismantle stale connections so as to produce new spatio-temporal sensibilities.

The operative questions here are:

• What are some of the theoretical, socio-cultural and political perspectives you carry into your studio work?
• What are some of the potentials and limits of these perspectives, and how would you transform them?

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[1] Philosopher Gilles Deleuze wrote that difference-from-itself is a more profound mode of difference than two or more entities being different to each other in comparative fashion. Deleuze explains that difference-from-itself or differenciation involves a process of variation which is constituted by internal variations. It is a difference where one thing, person, subject, place or concept varies by becoming different modalities. Difference in this instance is a difference-in-kind. The being (expressible as its identity and substance) of that thing which is differentiating-from-itself is fundamentally changed. It is in the perpetual process of becoming something else. In fact, because of the law of perpetuality, the very instance it becomes something else, it is already becoming something else, so forth. See Gilles Deleuze (1994), Difference and Repetition (Trans. P. Patton), London & New York: Continuum Books. p.39

[2] The “present” is a curious time unit. Whatever is present, at least whenever we aim to articulate the present in language is already becoming its own past as it propels into the future. From the perspective of dynamic time the present is always eluded.

[3] Philosopher Alain Badiou suggested that to think, to philosophise, is to brought to the foreground the political and ideological circumstances that created certain impasses for certain socio-economic groups. Especially, philosophy must discuss and rethink these impasses as they exist in present politico-ideological regimes, the master narrative. He wrote, “The worst thing is not that philosophy is linked to bloody and daring undertakings. For in this case it remains, even when in extreme error, on the side of invention, on the side of the genius of the weak, on the side of a power to come. The worst thing is to link it, purely and simply, to the arrogance and the self-satisfaction of the master in place.” If urban design is indeed a practice that makes visible connections amongst the past, present and future, then it must like philosophy also find ways to untangle past politico-ideological circumstances or power relations that continue to inhibit futures that promote congeniality and justice. See Alain Badiou (2006), Polemics (Trans. S. Corcoran), London: Verso, 2006, p. 72

[4] One need not look beyond the Vancouver Region for examples. West Vancouver’s British Properties is named as such for obvious reasons. And its Anglo-biased past is today manifested as class-based inequalities.  

[5] Neighbourhoods are certainly different, but this difference need not be a source of antagonisms. Different neighbourhoods with different characteristics can work together if we can identify how forces and power relations within and across neighbourhoods can be weaved together to produce shared meanings and uses. We can take a cue from philosopher and psychotherapist Félix Guattari here on non-opposition transformation. Guattari noted that the world cannot be (and was never) predicated on opposites like capitalist versus proletariat, culture versus nature, and even good versus bad. Instead it is about building up relations that function to undo certain injustices, and breaking those relations when stagnation or even regression occurs. Hence, “there will be times of struggle in which everyone will feel impelled to decide on common objectives and act like little soldiers… But there will simultaneously be periods in which individual and collective subjectivities will ‘pull out’ without a thought for collective aims, and in which creative expressions as such will take precedence.” For Guattari, the activist would become like an artist who will admit the “intrusion of some accidental detail, an event-incident that suddenly makes his initial project bifurcate, making it drift [deriver] far from its previous path, however certain it had once appeared to be.” It is to experiment, to discover how to gather up sometimes unfamiliar forces into relations that can combat what Guattari calls the all pervasive “Integrated World Capitalism” which aims to turn everything into a moralised Right versus Wrong. See Félix Guattari (2000), The Three Ecologies (Trans. I. Pindar + P. Sutton). London + New Brunswick, NJ: Athlone Press, pp.52-53.

[6] Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths + Helen Tiffin (1998) Key Concepts in Post-Colonial Studies, London + New York: Routledge, pp.60-63.

[7] The term “overseas-born Chinese” implies Chinese that are not born in Mainland China. The term is itself paradoxical in that an ethnic Chinese born in Canada or Singapore or Australia would regard him/herself as “overseas-born” and a Mainlander born overseas as “not-overseas-born”.

[8] Martin Heidegger (1971) Poetry, Language, Thought (Trans. A. Hofstadter), New York + London: Harper Colophon, p.154.

[9] Kees Dorst (2006), Understanding Design: 175 Reflections on being a designer, Corte Madera, CA: Gingko Press, p.64. Dorst wrote that while rules of thumb have served the design professions very well over the centuries, it is still important to notice when we are using them and query why they work for certain circumstances and not others. Putting rules of thumb through an analytical sieve, knowing how the components that make up a rule of thumb relate to each other and how they relate to things external to them will make it easier for us to break them when necessary. 

[10] Donald Schön (1983), The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals think in Action, New York + London: Basic Books, p.50.

[11] Michael Crotty (1998), The Foundations of Social Research: Meaning and Perspectives in the Research Process, Sydney: Allen and Unwin, p.3.