Don’t Use One Belief System
Planning students, and even seasoned professionals, often gravitate to the first solutions they can find, especially when encountering the routine anxiety of unfamiliar city problems. Some planners, a bit more seasoned, also know that initial, impulsive answers often come from bad advice that must be rethought. Just as there is no “perfect” city there is no “best” belief system for planners.
My first class in grad school assigned an article written by Barclay Jones, a key mentor in my studies, entitled “Design From Knowledge Not Belief”. After decades of experience this simple phrase no longer seems simple or self-evident. I have witnessed many planners misconstrue warehouses of data as “knowledge”, assumed to be valid because of the amount of data, and then, mistakenly claim the data to provide a rational, even scientific, basis for a plan. Think of this circumstance as analogous to a retelling of the “Emperor’s New Clothes” as the “Emperor’s New Data” — data accepted as truth until it is revealed as imaginary.
Many “big data” plans come from an enculturated belief that voluminous data about cities automatically implies knowledge (or even wisdom). When such extravagant data sets appear planners often assume that any interpretation of such knowledge will, by association, be imbued with valid knowledge of cities. We know that “knowledge by assoication” is just as misleading as “guilt by association”. We know data about cities is not knowledge. We know such data can lead to false beliefs that planners subsequently represent as knowledge. It is our own fault.
Can Planning Beliefs Make Bad Cities?
History offers many examples of bad cities resulting from planning beliefs. For example, new towns built by leaders long before the industrial revolution, believed they would expand the growth of their society. Supported by planners, such leaders created new settlements using economic, military or other rationales. For example, the Romans belief in the rationality of where they located military centers led to the evolution of major cities like Florence. Other forts failed as urban growth centers and subsequently disappeared from our cultural memory (except perhaps, for the work of dedicated archaeologists and historians). Every civilization has its successful legacies and its failed ghost towns. Some were failures of circumstance, but others may have been failures of community conceit, arrogance, bad luck, or bad planning. Put another way, behind every initiative to plan a city, complex belief systems are at work influencing the decision-makers.
When first constructed many Parisians believed the Eiffel Tower was a mistake – an aesthetic, unavoidable scar with uncompromising visibility that insulted the city. Eiffel thought otherwise. In addition, he installed a symbolic residential apartment at the top of the tower because he believed that was how future Parisians should live. Was that wise?
A curious example of an extreme community failure might be the evolution of Easter Island. As an isolated community in the Pacific Ocean, increases and decreases in population occurred over centuries due to internal strife, environmental changes, external influence from foreign incursions, disease, cultural beliefs, and other factors. The point is that even in a highly isolated, extreme condition, there are factors that can overtake communities in a pathological way and cause harm and community failures. In our time this “Easter Island” syndrome seems evident in energy policy, climate mitigation, urban renewal, and freeway development
New Harmony, Indiana, offers another, more modest example in the Midwest. First created by a communal, spiritual group led by Robert Owen, they developed many beautiful places and small settlements. Inhabitants encountered many internal community disagreements akin to a dysfunctional family but still managed to overcome most internal conflicts. This group, however, also professed celibacy which, as we might suspect, induced a declining population. Today, New Harmony is an historic district worthy of a visit. It represents lessons to be learned about beliefs and urban development, but it is not a resounding success story for urban planning.
In some cases, partial success or partial failure depends less directly on the content of a belief system and more on the skill and talent whereby planners enact those beliefs. For example, why do some City Beautiful plans seem more successful than others? It might not have been the belief system itself, but rather the talent whereby these beliefs were transformed into designs. Did Burnham’s beliefs in urban design concepts create places that overemphasized monumentality? Many planners believe that he was too absorbed in competing with monumental European geometries (and the Eiffel Tower). On the other hand Olmstead’s plans, also undertaken as part of the wave of City Beautiful policies, were considered much more successful. Olmsted’s solutions, unlike Burnham’s, were almost always crafted closely to adjust to circumstance – both urban and natural. His plans survived in part because they made places that are both monumental and intimate, balancing natural and built features.
New theories, models and beliefs about cities arise every decade. As new ideas emerge, misinterpretations, and planning mistakes abound. The once-new national capital of Brasilia provides a great example from the modernist era. Some would say Brasilia became a dystopian region. Other see it as a reasonably successful district intended as a utopian model of national prestige and social order. Founded in 1960, Brasilia has been the subject of debate ever since. Here is one severe critique:
Nothing dates faster than people's fantasies about the future. This [Brasilia] is what you get when perfectly decent, intelligent, and talented men start thinking in terms of space rather than place; and single rather than multiple meanings. It's what you get when you design for political aspirations rather than real human needs. You get miles of jerry-built platonic nowhere infested with Volkswagens. This, one may fervently hope, is the last experiment of its kind. The utopian buck stops here.
— Robert Hughes, The Shock of the New, Episode 4: "Trouble in Utopia", (1980)
Planners used one belief system to begin Brasilia and then, when the solution lapsed into failure, applied other models for development resulting in a far less utopian outcome but perhaps a better city.
As I write this, belief in new technologies -- artificial intelligence and machine learning -- seems to be transforming our profession and our cities once again. If past technological transformations are any indication we will use these new tools to uncover deeper and more complex problems before we find new solutions. Unfortunately artificial intelligence may also uncover a Pandora’s Box that replicates bad urban plans. Technological changes brought about by the elevator, air conditioning, computer, electrification, and automobiles to name just a few. Each of these inventions impacted our beliefs and ultimately the way we plan.
Second, How Can Planners Use Multiple Theories, Models, and Precedents?
When planners try to avoid the paralysis of too much data (TMD?) they sometimes defer to a well-respected model or solution. I think of these as planning theory “isms” like capitalism, urbanism, socialism, sub urbanism, pedestrianism, environmentalism, behaviorism, modernism, historicism, contextualism, and incrementalism. Sometimes there is no “ism”, just a new model given a name like: garden city; centralized plan; satellite plan; traffic calming; sustainability; resilience; on and on.
Among the major beliefs that have transformed cities (and the planning profession) the urban freeway seems to be at the top of the list. These photographs from Seattle (1972 -1990) clearly show the physical imposition of a freeway on a city and how such interventions create melodramatic impacts. Planners have gained knowledge regarding making freeways work effectively for transportation, little knowledge about how freeways impacted cities. Today there is clear movement towards reassessing freeways and, in some cases, replacing them (like the Park East freeway in Milwaukee which is illustrated elsewhere in these essays). It is an understatement to note how that freeways represent multiple, conflicting, unresolved systems of belief facing urban planners.
Some planners idealize practice-based models like Central Park, Disneyland, the San Antonio Riverwalk, the Grand Canal, Piazza San Marco, Seaside, Bourbon Street, the High Line, the latest and greatest award-winning place. Rarely will these models be replicable easily but they will all have embedded qualities worth consideration. But planners must have the wisdom to select, modify, and apply such ideas based on talent, not faith in a belief system. Some ideas are better than others, all have a place, none are mutually exclusive, and they are never collectively exhaustive.
Great models usually fit seamlessly into their context. “Fitting in” requires planners to employ many unique, often non-transferable, features. That is, great models for planning are usually difficult to transfer to a new context. One of the most well-known, and misused, models in our cities is the pedestrianized “main street” which has been replicated repeatedly and actually kills (rather than revitalizes) many existing main streets. That is, planners “believing” in pedestrianization mistakenly remove automatically the automobile traffic which provides the economic oxygen needed for survival. Some main streets work well as pedestrianized places and others do not. Pedestrianizing places effectively requires useful knowledge, not just a simple-minded guess or misapplied belief.
Can Planners Find “Beliefs” in the Context of the Problem?
Within the maze of theories and models, one approach noted above, that bears greater recognition derives from yet another “ism” -- an approach to urban design and planning called “contextualism”. This approach was described by Colin Rowe and Thomas Schumacher in the 1960s. In terms of urban planning this approach champions the design of cities in response to their actual context, emphasizing both an appreciation for evaluating the physical form of the context as well as evaluating its intellectual and cultural history.
I find “contextualism” far more valid than other theories. Opponents of context-based planning have suggested that this approach diminishes the search for innovation, leads to over-emphasis on using history and ultimately continues bad plans and designs. These opponents of contextualism (in my view) seem to interpret, incorrectly, that the goal of a contextualist approach requires mindless adherence to the aesthetic and cultural context of a plan or project. Yet the opposing viewpoint, that the context is irrelevant creates an even bigger error – that of ignoring realities.
Contextualism is, in many ways the first line of defense against arbitrary perceptions and dismissal of inconvenient truths. While contextual analysis should be the first step in the planning process, it is never the last step in the process of good planning and design. In some projects, especially from a technical perspective, the very first step in a planning projects is called “due diligence” in which the planner, engineer, or comparable expert, analyzes many of the legal and physical realities of a site relying primarily on regulations, dimensions, natural environmental conditions, and economic data. This is a critical part of the context, but it usually stops short of what is necessary for a meaningful useful evaluation of context for city plans.
For planners, a due diligence investigation of a site might include, critical analysis of non-regulatory aspects of local history and social conditions which may, over time, be essential to effective planning. The full range of contextual analysis usually reveals a wide assortment of conditions, values, observations and histories that need to be addressed by planners, even when it would be far more comfortable to suppress unpopular realities. The task of responding to inconvenient or unpopular conditions often becomes a challenge to planners whose ongoing political success depends on remaining popular within their community.
Should Planners “Beliefs” Match Community “Beliefs”?
As we learn from the context, we also learn by listening to the community. If nothing else, the community represents the values and attitudes embedded in the context. If there are ten commandments in planning, community engagement sits near the top of the list. Whether or not this a good idea depends on how we interpret the concept of “listening”.
These photographs reveal interesting beliefs that may have been held by the planners involved in the development. The top left shows a street in lower Manhattan (1960s) which shows how a building entry can accommodate those in a higher social class (entering at the top of the stairs) versus persons with a lower social rank that enter through portals hidden under the stairs. The upper right photograph shows two side-by-side townhomes in Toronto(1970s) built to look like larger homes presumably to raise the value, the two lower photographs are from Stuyvesant Town in Manhattan (2000s) built on beliefs of economic/social segregation and creating buildings that did not fit into their urban context.
Planners should always listen to understand values and appreciate a community’s aspirations. Moreover planners should act with benevolence, not malicious intent. However, not all communities, nor all people, act with benevolence at all times. If they did there would be no racism or community injustice. Bad, and certainly poor and foolish behaviors, exist. Less obvious, but still unwanted behaviors can predominate a community’s chosen course of development. While planners should understand the moral content of a community’s actions and goals, they must also evaluate independently the degree to which such directions should be followed, mitigated, or suppressed.
I have often thought it would be nice to have a zoning code that prohibited ugly buildings. It would make our job as planners much easier as long as there was some rational authority we could use as the evaluator of aesthetic merit. The same is true of community fairness and equity. Regulatory codes and public policies that try to embody moral judgments can be useful guideposts, but they are not necessarily standards of good planning. As planners we need to adhere to principles that come from our own experience and wisdom. In planning practice I have never found a moral or aesthetic standard for which there was not a reasonable exception. This makes planning much harder, but failure to accept this reality makes planning extremely dangerous and susceptible to major errors.
Topic Summary
Can Planning Beliefs Make Bad Cities?
Second, How Can Planners Use Multiple Theories, Models, and Precedents?
Can Planners Find “Beliefs” in the Context of the Problem?
Should Planners “Beliefs” Match Community “Beliefs”?