Cities from Scratch

Paolo Soleri would have been 100 years old today. He was born, appropriately, on the solstice in 1919 in Turin, Italy. He died at 93, probably still speaking in the future tense as he had his entire professional life, never giving up on the brave new world he was going to make. 

He was 87, lean and weathered, when I met him at Arcosanti to look through the archives for drawings and models for an exhibition that didn’t happen—hasn’t yet happened. I had interviewed him earlier, when he came to Washington to receive the Cooper Hewitt National Design Award for lifetime achievement. As I remember it, Laura Bush would be giving him the award but Paolo was so angry and disgusted by the Bush administration that when she handed it to him he was going to hand her a several-pages long diatribe on the wreckage her husband had made of the country. How does one respond to a desert prophet with such a plan? One can picture Laura Bush’s frozen smile, as she looked into his piercing ungrateful eyes. If only he were still with us…

It takes a certain ferocity to decide to build a new world in the desert outside of Phoenix, and Soleri was uncompromising. Soleri’s cities, his “arcologies” are radical reorganizations of space and society, because you can’t really have one without the other. When architects and urban designers talk about “form” and “order” they are referring to physical elements and spatial arrangements. The very same terms, though, have currency in political discourse, in what James Scott calls “statecraft,” and it is in the deployment of such terms that the city, as both a physical place and a political entity, comes into being.

I’ve been thinking a lot about making cities from scratch as I read Scott’s book, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed, chase the ghost of Francis Nicholson--serial royal governor and purported city-shaper of Williamsburg and Annapolis—and reflect on Soleri’s efforts. It’s easy to dismiss Arcosanti as so much windmill tilting, itself a metaphor with a renewable energy twist, and to dismiss the idea that novel architectural forms like cast concrete apses would be sufficient to effect the revolution. It’s also easy to forget how long city-making takes and how rare are the true cities from scratch. Yet, the irascible Nicholson sketched the outlines of new royal capital cities as part of his job to keep the colonists in line. The bones of those two cities were sufficiently compelling that they ended up embedded in the plan for Washington, a city most definitely not designed for obedient colonists.

How many modes must a...

How many modes must a--clever start, but the finish is doesn't hold up--a woman employ to get around the Blue/Yellow line shutdown?  Dylan never would have written that line, but I can't help myself, which is why he is who he is, and I am who I am.

My answer yesterday was six (not 42). True, all the modes were not shutdown related, but the shutdown does put one's mind in a place where, if one can stop cursing the deferred maintenance demons, it can shake off old habits and be liberated to explore the full spectrum of transit options. Public transit options that is. That's where the fun is.

I always begin my work day walking (mode #1) down Connecticut Avenue,  past the hotels stuffed with school groups and lanyarded conventioneers, boarding buses or escaping the chill of meeting rooms. I continue past the bagel place and onto the coffee block, where an independent shop sits defiantly and successfully right next to Starbucks, a ethnographer's research project waiting to happen. I greet the smiling homeless man--"have a good day" he always says--pass the Washington Post Express hawker (I have home delivery) and descend to the Red Line. (mode #2) I get into my commuting zone then--I stand in the same place on the platform to board the same car through the same door to get to the same destination. I origami my Post into a compact subway fold and read until it's time to change to Yellow at Gallery Place, and settle in for the ride to Old Town.

Not anymore: now I have to remind myself to walk to a different place on the platform because at the summer's end-of-the-line National Airport, as I learned after a few absent-minded misses, the efficient path to the shutdown shuttle is different from my preferred exit at King Street. No more same places.

The shutdown shuttle bus (mode #3) slowly lumbers out of the airport road skein and begins a surprisingly pleasant ride down the GW Parkway. I'm torn now, between finishing the front page section of the Post and looking out the window. It's a dilemma: if I don't finish the newspaper, I am less informed; on the other hand, if I put down the paper, I free myself from the incessant chatter and benefit from a biophilia hit of green scenery. 

This shuttle actually stops at Washington and King Streets,  so it is more convenient to me then arriving at the King Street Metro Station. Now I have a new morning walk, westward on King Street, rather than eastward on Prince, where I see different people and different things. Not the blocks of rowhouse domesticity, with just brick and a single pane of drooping old glass between their interiors and the public realm; not the half-friendly couple--she always smiles; he never does--nor the woman who always wears bold colors; not the pseudo-Stevie Nicks always dressed more dramatically than morning demands. On King Street instead there's the early morning bustle of deliveries and the pre-opening rituals of small businesses.

Modes #4 and #5 came with a morning meeting--I was a passenger in a car, yes, a car, to get to the meeting. I had planned ahead, though, and brought my bike helmet so I could bikeshare back to school. I learned two things: one, there's Potomac Yards bike trail, which could end up full of riders in maroon and orange speeding between VT's new campus and our old one; two, I am definitely out of biking shape.

My day ended walking--repeat modes don't count in the mode total--back down King Street but this time passing Washington and walking all the way to the river to catch the water taxi (mode #6) to the Wharf.  This was my second time using the water taxi and I've considered getting the special shutdown commuter season pass, but it's not the most efficient way to commute unless you live and work close to the respective waterfronts. It certainly is the most enjoyable, though. Arriving at the Wharf, to crowds of concert goers, taxi passengers, drinkers, diners, and residents, it strains my memory to see what the waterfront was just a few years ago. Where did all the people come from? Were they hiding somewhere? It's easy to criticize the Wharf (Actually, it's easy to criticize, period; I do it for sport) for a variety of development sins, but it's far more interesting to reflect on what is done well. I'll save that for another post...

Car owners are probably making very different choices to get through the shutdown. They're hunkering down in their air-conditioned private steel cocoons, cursing their peers for making the same decision, griping about Metro's inability to keep itself in shape and voting down, every chance they get, funding to keep it in shape. In this way, the cracks between public and private space widen and deepen; the myth we tell ourselves--e pluribus unam--gradually devolves to e pluribus duo: out of many, two--us and them. Where is this going?

This is my first post in years (I did withdraw from blogging to write an actual book) and it is my first step to return to writing about the city, about public space in particular and its many flavors, sweet and savory, with the goal of testing ideas and topics for the next book, which will be on what I'm currently calling First Amendment space.  So it begins.