Krieger to Duany
My friend Andres Duany is as clever as can be, and so, surely timed his Metropolis obituary for Harvard’s Urban Design Program to correspond with our celebration of the 50th Anniversary of the founding of the Urban Design Program, at which he is to speak [this week, November 12, 13]. Why not a shot across the bow a week early? It certainly got our attention. Though how he intends to defend this theory in front of several hundred people looking ahead to participating in the second half century of the discipline of urban design will be interesting to observe. To paraphrase Mark Twain, reports of our demise have been greatly exaggerated. While, yes, an increased interest in environmental stewardship is surely in our future. It would be utterly irresponsible for it not to be so during these next decades of the 21st century.
Those of us who teach and practice urban design welcome an environmentally-based broadening of the discipline, which at times has been perceived as too narrowly aligned with architectural sensibilities. Addressing urbanism wisely in its many contemporary guises, we now know, requires a multiplicity of arrows in our intellectual quivers – ecological considerations being among the ‘sharpest’ of these. Why should not the landscape architecture profession re-assert its voice, as concern about ecological footprints gains broad public notice. It has been the design discipline that has most consistently retained consciousness of humanity’s impact on land and environments. We at the GSD even recall that the birth of American urban planning, as a serious academic discipline, begins with the lectures at Harvard of Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr. in the 1920’s.
Duany is correct in describing the urban design program at Harvard as having an international orientation. It always has. But the assumption that we will now abdicate the study of the North American city to the “landscape/ecological urbanists,” as he puts it, is, well, a sign of uncharacteristic insecurity on his part.
I suspect Andres’ postulating a nefarious ‘coup’ at Harvard, in which Urban Design is erased in favor of something called Ecological Urbanism, is actually a cover for a personal worry that the term Landscape Urbanism will soon supplant New Urbanism amongst the purveyors of design sloganeering. The arrival of a new oracle, timely draped with environmental virtues is unsettling. The fear has been building up for awhile among the New Urbanists. Especially since Charles Waldheim, my colleague at Harvard, and certainly affiliated with the spread of the term Landscape Urbanism, has been quoted as saying that: “Landscape Urbanism was specifically meant to provide an intellectual and practical alternative to the hegemony of the New Urbanism.” Well, those are fighting words, I guess, and so a counter-offensive campaign among the New Urbanists has been ordered.
Consider a recent article in Planetizen by Michael Mehaffy entitled “The Landscape Urbanism: Sprawl in a Pretty Green Dress?” This is a play on a frequent observation, sometimes attributed to me, of New Urbanism producing “sprawl in drag”. Or, consider a yet unpublished (I believe) essay by Emily Talen making its rounds among the New Urbanists, entitled “Tire in the Park,” whose opening sentence reads “It’s easy to poke fun at landscape urbanism.” The essay then delights in lifting various jargon-filled quotes that Talen finds in the Waldheim-edited The Landscape Urbanism Reader, commenting, “Do they not see how unoriginal it is to find ‘structure out of chaos’, or to view cities like ecosystems?”
Granted, that does seem a bit unoriginal. But when Talen remarks that Landscape Urbanism is “strangely uncritical of its own self-inflated propositions,” one can only smile at how easy it has been to poke fun at the New Urbanists as they have remained so strangely uncritical of their own self-inflated propositions.
Meanwhile, as my mail box fills with panicked “Is it True?” queries, let me assure all those concerned about the ‘coup,’ that Urban Design at Harvard – where the name was coined and the discipline began – is alive and well, and celebrating its 50th year as a post-professional degree program. Let the slogans and sound bites, conspiracy theories and laying down of gauntlets, semi-militaristic analogies of conquest of intellectual territory swirl. It’s fun. Within the Urban Design Program we savor insightful debate (and irony, too): certain that renewing the centers of cities, building new ones, restoring the parts of old cities worthy of preservation, postulating models of equitable growth, husbanding resources, and managing peripheral spread are diverse mandates, thus unreceptive to being conquered by singular view of urbanism.
If we love it, will it last?
Re-imagining Infrastructure: Part II
Getting to the (living) future… or 100% for all?
The Big Apple vs. the City of Lights
Lab Report: XXVIII
Something old, something new
Nine Lives of Green
Q&A: Nina Rappaport
Tough Love
Made in America
BACK TO TOP
Having stumbled on this debate quite by accident, the vapor that rises out of the various positions so rigidly held seems to me to be more about who is on the podium then the heart felt desire to inform those that make decisions about how cities grow and what their environmental and aesthetic opportunities might be.
Neither architects nor landscape architects build cities without the informed and challenging consensus of politicians and the owners of projects and their financial backing.
It might be time to open the doors and let the sun shine in.
Respectfully,
Webb Nichols
Comment by Webb Nichols — November 9, 2010, @ 1:37 pm
Andres Duany seems more hot air than anything else. But he does rouse an audience, and does provide a valid point from time to time. New Urbanism is not, however, the be all, end all, and Duany himself has said that it is not a “silver bullet” to solve all problems.
Alex K, via the GSD, seems to provide a more balanced perspective of how the various professions can work together to provide better solutions than that offered by the transect.
Bert Hoffman
Comment by Bert Hoffman — November 10, 2010, @ 8:59 pm
Looks like the academic quest for the “right” labels is alive and well ! Kudos to both Kreiger and Duany for a well timed “academic ???” debate.
Comment by Madhu — November 11, 2010, @ 9:18 am
[…] If anyone is interested in Urban Design, the 50th Anniversary of Harvard’s Urban Design program (the first UD program in the world) is being held this weekend in the form of a huge conference. The link below lists the schedule, which starts tomorrow, 11/12, and runs through Saturday evening. Should be interesting, and if anything, it’ll be fun to watch a good fight over this and this. […]
Pingback by Tactile Goods » Some Upcoming & Past Events — November 11, 2010, @ 5:08 pm
Does this mean that Milford Ct. may not be for all circumstances? Thank goodness there are still some willing to push back.
Comment by Chris Young — November 12, 2010, @ 7:22 am
Andres Duany always writes his things with meticulous precision, logical clarity, scientific vigour, flamboyant mind and academic honesty…One should take this article very seriously and everyone should ask themselves one thing: isn’t it time for a change in one of the most conservative and architecturally regressed urbanist schools in the world, one that has given URBAN DESIGN to the world but has taken so much from that wonderful discipline throughout the years and isn’t it finally time for some people to step down and make room for others to come in and bring new and more progressive ideas to GSD…
Comment by Tigran Haas — November 12, 2010, @ 2:04 pm
[…] Krieger, Interim Chair of the GSD Urban Planning and Design department, shot back that landscape urbanism has long been “the design discipline that has most consistently retained […]
Pingback by Urban Omnibus » GSD Throwdown: Battle for the Intellectual Territory of a Sustainable Urbanism — November 17, 2010, @ 2:52 pm
I’m astonished that this debate frames Urban Design as a conflict between New Urbanism and Landscape Urbanism. Neither of them is Urban Design, both of them are just particular ideologies that most people don’t take very seriously. Everyone has known for years that despite some good aspects of New Urbanism, its focus on historical precedents and lack of a vision for the future will render it increasingly irrelevant. And Landscape Urbanism… well, thinking about cities as ecosystems is a good idea, but they’ve focused way too much on plant-filled public spaces to be taken particularly seriously. In any case, both Landscape Urbanism and New Urbanism just very small subsets of Urbanism and Urban Design. Let’s not forget that. It’s not Landscape Urbanism or New Urbanism. It’s both, and hundreds of other ways of thinking about cities too.
Comment by Ryan Reinicken — November 18, 2010, @ 7:30 pm
A significant percentage of LU projects are simply “large parks”. This was pointed out in a YouTube video from the University of Michigan Taubman College (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=auRd-QfVrqU), where some academics were filmed over dinner discussing Waldheim and LU (they dismissed LU as a passing “large parks” fad). Even with the Toronto Don River project, it has been stated that the urbanism that is included in the project is there in order “to pay for the fish sex park”.
Comment by Paul Crabtree, PE — November 23, 2010, @ 5:47 pm
Emily Talen’s piece, mentioned by Alex Krieger, is published: http://newurbannetwork.com/news-opinion/blogs/emily-talen/13579/tire-park
I think the heart of the “anxiety” is to do with students, and whether they will be taught to care for the humans. That is definitely important to Emily. We build cities to serve our cultures, and that requires a constant accumulation of experience and evidence. The more experience and evidence is accumulated, the more the result will approach (or be) time-tested patterns. It is good to stand back and question, critique, but in service of that accumulation, not as an artistic goal in itself.
To the extent that designers and students accumulate such learning, the more New Urbanists will respect, absorb, and integrate the works.
Comment by Bruce F. Donnelly — November 24, 2010, @ 9:00 pm
Alex Krieger’s Harvard status robe is the ultimate garment from the Emperor’s New Clothes closet. The world has had enough irony and narcissism in buildings and their environs. It needs human habitats that are worth living in. By the way, the irony only works if we apprehend that our lives are a joke.
Jim
James Howard Kunstler
Comment by james howard kunstler — December 1, 2010, @ 10:42 am