Informal Cities

Swiped from the Africa Unchained blog:

An excerpt from Robert Neuwirth's Lecture 'The Extroverted City of System D' a contribution to the book Open City:

In Lagos, everything is informal. The bus system is informal—the government got out of mass transit business decades ago (though it has recently stepped back into public transport with a bus rapid transit line) and the system that includes more than 75,000 danfos was held together informally by the National Union of Road Transport Workers as one-part mass transit and one-part Ponzi scheme. One of the largest formal supermarkets in Lagos buys most of its product from informal wholesalers. Some major multinationals here distribute their products through informal networks. And informal merchants invest in the formal world.

Authorities in the city acknowledge that as much as 80 percent of the work force—and Lagos has between nine and 17 million inhabitants, depending on where you draw the boundaries and who’s doing the counting—is involved in the informal sector. The federal government also suggests that somewhere around 60 to 70 percent of the country’s economic activity derives in some way from the informal sector—and this means that, in aggregate, merchants like Prince Chidi Onyeyirim and Fatai Agbalaya are more important to Nigeria’s future than Shell, Mobil, and Chevron, the multinational oil giants that pump sweet crude from the Niger River Delta.

As Mega-Cities continue to explode in population around the world (particularly in Africa) they continue to stretch the conceptual frameworks of what cities were meant to be and how they are organized. Most modern cities may appear to chaotic but when examined closely, they are heavily structured and organized systems that control and dictate the flow of traffic, development, water, sewage, air and open space. The lack of those uniform structural systems in dense urban places creates chaos and challenges the belief of whether that urban place is truly a defined city jurisdiction with a definitive boundaries to the city's power of influence and control. The uninformed mega-cities of today have no beginnings and endings to the jurisdiction's scope of power.

Top Five Comic Book Cities

http://www.architectsjournal.co.uk/the-critics/top-10-comic-book-cities/5204772.article

Interesting note on Gotham City:

So there you are…..anyway, usually it serves as a backdrop but in the ‘Destroyer’ story arc in DC’s Legends of the Dark Knight monthly comic, the architecture of Gotham City was a central character. Destroyer focused on a crazed architectural historian obsessed with reviving the work of Gotham town planner Cyrus Pinkey. Before Batman intervenes, most of Gotham’s contemporary glass and concrete skyscrapers which had obscured Pinky’s gothic extravagances, are destroyed by the ‘Mad Bomber’.

However, this story was actually a rather brazen piece of opportunistic ‘masterplanning’ by Batman’s editors who wanted the Gotham in the comic books to resemble the one in depicted in Tim Burton’s film – in order to attract new readers. In Destroyer, Pinky’s towers are a dead ringer for Anton Furst’s designs for the film (see Furst’s sketches in the slideshow above).

The Artwork of Dan Witz

Dan Witz, 1957 born in Chicago, IL, received his BFA from Cooper Union in New York. In the late 70's he moved to New York’s East Village. The artwork of Dan Witz evinces a rigorous conceptual framework. This framework not only opens up a dialogue with graffiti and street art which dominate the urban environment, but also allows for the retention of clear and open lines with the canon of art history.

From the no-wave and DIY movements of New York’s Lower East Side of the 70’s, through the Reaganomics of the 80’s to the flourishing of graffiti art in the new millennium. Whether stickers or paste-up silk-screened posters, conceptual pranks and interventions, or beautiful tromp l’oeil paintings, the medium is inspired as much by the nature and subject of his art as by the mutating urban conditions in which the piece is executed.

Spending Time With New York Street Advertising Takeover

New York City is covered with illegal billboards and advertisements. One random day, civilians decided to take back the public space by covering over 120 illegal billboards with original works of art.

Don Draper would not be pleased.

Planning and the White City

As many city planners and urban historians know, the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago greatly influenced how city officials at the time could envision cities. See the fair included a futuristic expo about cities, which included human scale models of grand institutional buildings set alongside broad tree-lined boulevards and intricately laid out parks that incorporated the best of the city and nature. The expo laid the foundation for creating this nation’s first city Master Plan. The expo would forever change how America looked at its cities, which at the time were crowded, dreary places that lacked open space, clean air and parks for recreational activities. The very progressive and socially liberal expo of the 1893 World’s Fair was dubbed the White City after the color of all the monumental buildings that were constructed. Planners and cityophile geeks are probably familiar with the book and documentary, Magic and the White City, which covered the creation and influence of the 1893 expo.

Over one hundred years later, we have a knew version of the White City which is just as progressive and liberal as the 1893 expo was at it’s time. These meticulously planned cities are also very progressive and liberal and have a heavy emphasis on connecting the urban form with nature. These cities, which pride themselves on creating cities with a human scale, have been dubbed White Cities not because of the color of their buildings but because of the lack of color in their city’s population. Newsgeography.com recently ran an article called The White City, lamenting the fact that many of the cities that have been dubbed as progressive or even cool among national planning pundits and observers are almost entirely white. The article states:

“Among the media, academia and within planning circles, there’s a generally standing answer to the question of what cities are the best, the most progressive and best role models for small and mid-sized cities. The standard list includes Portland, Seattle, Austin, Minneapolis, and Denver. In particular, Portland is held up as a paradigm, with its urban growth boundary, extensive transit system, excellent cycling culture, and a pro-density policy. These cities are frequently contrasted with those of the Rust Belt and South, which are found wanting, often even by locals, as 'cool' urban places.

But look closely at these exemplars and a curious fact emerges. If you take away the dominant Tier One cities like New York, Chicago and Los Angeles you will find that the “progressive” cities aren’t red or blue, but another color entirely: white.”

The article continues on to question how can cities be labeled as hip and progressive if they lack a diversity of cultures. The author wonders out loud whether there is a correlation between what is labeled a progressive city and a lack of diversity within that city. And if that is so, what does that really say about those who consider themselves liberal? The author does acknowledge that having a homogeneous population allows cities to pass major government planning expenditures like transit with much more considerable ease because there are no competing interests, threatened communities or communities that would receive more benefits then others. While, without a doubt, planning for the diverse needs of multiple incomes, cultures and beliefs definitely makes planning for the whole a lot more difficult, the author does not let “progressive” cities off the hook for not reaching out to their small but present black communities. The article goes on to state:

“I believe that cities that start taking their African American and other minority communities seriously, seeing them as a pillar of civic growth, will reap big dividends and distinguish themselves in the marketplace.

This trail has been blazed not by the 'progressive' paragons but by places like Atlanta, Dallas and Houston. Atlanta, long known as one of America's premier African American cities, has boomed to become the capital of the New South. It should come as no surprise that good for African Americans has meant good for whites too.”

To that specific point, social commentator and essayist Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote on his blog that:

“...leaving aside the blinding whiteness of dubbing Atlanta "un-progressive," leaving aside that most of these "progressive" cities have more black people than their surrounding states, I think the implicit argument that these cities should be "doing more" to assure that their black population meets the national average is odious.

Man listen--Negroes like Atlanta. Negroes like Chicago. Negroes like Houston. Negroes like Raleigh-Durham (another area that doesn't make the cut, for some reason.) Negroes like Oakland. Negroes have the right to like where they live, independent of Massa, for their own particular, native, independent reasons (family? great barbecue? housing stock?) Just like Jewish-Americans have the right to like New York--or not. Just like Japanese-Americans have the right to like Cali--or not.”

I think Ta-Nehisi makes a great point. There are going to be cities that certain cities gravitate too for many reasons. Just because a city lacks diversity does not mean that they should pump up the city’s community of color just for the sake of being more diverse. True diversity will come to a city naturally and most importantly, internally as long as that city is open to everyone and is not discriminatory. Now if we find out that these “progressive” cities are really inhospitable to certain cultures or they try to minimize the size of a different culture (the old planning text adage is that when the minority population increases over 10% of the population, white flight starts to occur). If these cities are truly progressive and they still lack diversity then it may just not be those communities cup of tea.

As a city planner, I do find it interesting that the cities and places with the largest black populations such as Atlanta, Houston, Charlotte and the D.C. suburbs are some of the most sprawling cities and locales in the country. We all know that obesity is a national problem and near epidemic levels in portions of the black community. While having a preeminent large upper and middle class community in these major cities is great sign of progress, are the locations of where of the large black middle class lives really doing more harm than good? And while the author of The White City is asking why are progressively planned cities so white, the question I would like to know is why the locations of the black middle class are planned so horribly?

What is your take on progressive white cities and their lack of diversity? Also what is your opinion on why cities with a large black population have so much sprawl? Do you see any correlations? I would like to hear your thoughts, please leave a comment.

Expo Magic of the White City, 1893 Chicago Worlds Fair

White City, a feature length film about the 1893 Chicago World's Fair released in 2005 and narrated by Gene Wilder.

The White City - Built to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus' discovery of America, a "White City" with structures resembling the great marble columns of Rome resides at its unlikely home - a reclaimed swamp in Chicago. On May 1, 1893, over 300,000 people gather at the site for the World's Columbian Exposition opening. No crowd of this size has ever before assembled in one place in the United States.