Tuesday, April 27, 2021

On this day, 2018

New waterfront public space at the Patkau Architects designed Polygon Art Gallery in North Vancouver. Here the sea walk and rippling seating. Public area extending into the harbour almost complete. Connects to the Quay Market, the Seabus, and the bus interchange.

Three years ago today I took the SeaBus across Burrard Inlet to North Vancouver to see the new art gallery and seaside...

Posted by Nanaimo Commons on Tuesday, 27 April 2021

Monday, April 26, 2021

#PlaceMaking

True and false diversity, by Léon Krier

Friday, April 23, 2021

Tuesday, April 20, 2021

Silos, organized complexity, complex adaptive systems. The 21st Century city

The age of the siloed credentialed specialist is coming to an end.
“Credentialing, not educating, has become the primary business of North American universities.” Jane Jacobs, Dark Age Ahead
There is a common thread that runs through much contemporary writing and thinking about economies, organizations, and cities. From Jane Jacobs to, most recently, author, economist, former Dean of Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto, Roger L. Martin.
Martin's new book When More is Not Better: Overcoming America’s Obsession With Efficiency, studies the system failures caused by applying machine-thinking solutions to complex-adaptive-system problems.
Jane Jacobs' arguably most important insight into the workings of the city appears in the last chapter of The Death and Life of Great American Cities. It is that cities are systems of organized complexity. "The variables are many but are not helter-skelter; they are interrelated into an organic whole.”
Former Vancouver chief planner Brent Toderian in this 2015 Planetizen essay Better City-Making Means Breaking Down Silos—Here's How (to get a more holistic approach to city-building) recounts "the story of the NASA janitor being asked by President Kennedy what his job was, and the janitor giving the answer "I'm helping to put a man on the moon.””
The thread that runs through this thinking, is that human systems (the economy, the city) are adaptive systems like the life sciences. And that if we stubbornly persist in applying solutions to complex adaptive systems that would be appropriate only to machines, we will fail, often we will only compound our problems.
Organized complexity ("The variables are many but are not helter-skelter; they are interrelated into an organic whole.”) silo breaking ("I'm helping to put a man on the moon.” ) and the complex adaptive system ("theory-based approaches will produce deeply flawed outcomes") share an ethos. They counter, as architect and urban designer Ken Greenberg says, the neo-conservative ideological trend of recent decades, “beggar thy neighbour policies [that] inevitably lead to a race to the bottom and impoverishment of the public realm and public services."
And here the point is made yet again by Strong Towns founder Charles Marohn in his blog post “Do You Want to Know What Works?
"Those administering the complicated pattern — the technical professionals — quickly become obsessed with growth and the inputs (capital) necessary to create accelerating levels of growth. They become trapped in what we’ve called the Growth Ponzi Scheme as liabilities mount over time. Those administering the complex pattern—a co-creation of citizens and humble professionals—obsess over feedback as a way to discern what they should do next. They are seeking stability through the continual harmonizing of many competing objectives, one of which is growth (though not the only one)." — Charles Marohn

Wednesday, April 7, 2021

Transformative Placemaking :
The Anne T. and Robert M. Bass Center for Transformative Placemaking

"In the last several decades, the pendulum has begun to shift back, as there's greater demand for certain urban attributes: proximity, density, and walkability."

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