Responding to msg by 00mabaron@xxxxxxxxxxxxx () on
>to Michael Kaplan:
>
>There has been plenty of urban planning, but has there
>been any urban DESIGN in the past 40 years?
00mabaron,
That reminds me. . .
Columbia U, my great slightly-behind-the-times alma, sets up
programs lickety-split to capture market share: yes, it set an
early Urband Design program to fit between Regular Architecture
and Urband Planning, sometime after Architectural Technology
and before Historic Preservation and, one of the latest, Real
Estate Development -- most started as toe-in-the-water single
courses, then grew as the media-hyped sucker-play (sorry,
customer, sorry, student, sorry, donor, sorry government
funding) caught on.
All are still going chugging along, raking in variable bucks to
support a few tired-tenures and a bunch of scraggly part-timers
(sorry, late-hire-quick-in-and-slow-out adjuncts) of the Noble
(if Poor) Architecture star-program -- note name: Graduate
School for Architecture, Planning and Preservation, to see what
really sells Out There.
Story time:
Dean Jim Polshek invited me (PT-grunt in '70s
rear-edge-preservation) to witness a grueling argument between
wild-haired-leftist Peter Marcuse, head of Urban Planning, and
an urbane (!) head of Urban Design, Alex Cooper (not yet famous
but locally admired for innovative urban design under John
Lindsay's mayoralty). The argument was about how to get money
from cash-cow preservation into their off-market programs, who
would live and who would fold.
Jim knew how to pickpocket preservation (doing so in practice)
by bum-kissing Ada Huxtable and the Blue-Haired Astors (my
forte too), and he wanted me to instruct these smug know-alls.
Well, I tried to be a benevolent Plato and they chopped my
liver. Their pride could not admit that the sun had set on
their sacred scams. While once both fields had good press,
paying customers (see list above), now they needed
over-the-transom HP pittance.
Jim Fitch, head of preservation, was fighting JPolshek
fiercely, for his populist-rich program while fighting CU for
retiree lucre. Finally, JimP made a Kissingerian deal to get
Fitch a magnanimous CU retirement so he could lift HP bucks to
pay Peter and Alex and RAMStern and the Extortionate Gang.
(OTOH, I got jackbooted for a totally related CU scam, but
that's another story.)
Urban Design at CU (and now worldwide) once was about good
design in the old built-environment sense but now it's
promoting pan-design in the Woolsworthian sense -- law,
planning, development, preservation, architecture, exterior
decoration, just about anything that will bring in small
change. Just like Architecture, Urban Planning, Preservation
and REDevelopment, they all watch and lift and copy each other.
For this reason, they are all a little lightweight on the
dignified-credibility public-interest scale -- it's hard to
tell which is which.
Coda of hope: one of the first, and I think best, UD CU profs
was Aldo Giurgola; but he's self-exiled down under -- an
exemplary urban design decision to ponder. Maybe he'll return
to lead us out of the variety store. But I doubt it, not after
the Balladeers of Beloved Variety Emporia gang-banged him for
Kimballing-Kimball.
John
>to Michael Kaplan:
>
>There has been plenty of urban planning, but has there
>been any urban DESIGN in the past 40 years?
00mabaron,
That reminds me. . .
Columbia U, my great slightly-behind-the-times alma, sets up
programs lickety-split to capture market share: yes, it set an
early Urband Design program to fit between Regular Architecture
and Urband Planning, sometime after Architectural Technology
and before Historic Preservation and, one of the latest, Real
Estate Development -- most started as toe-in-the-water single
courses, then grew as the media-hyped sucker-play (sorry,
customer, sorry, student, sorry, donor, sorry government
funding) caught on.
All are still going chugging along, raking in variable bucks to
support a few tired-tenures and a bunch of scraggly part-timers
(sorry, late-hire-quick-in-and-slow-out adjuncts) of the Noble
(if Poor) Architecture star-program -- note name: Graduate
School for Architecture, Planning and Preservation, to see what
really sells Out There.
Story time:
Dean Jim Polshek invited me (PT-grunt in '70s
rear-edge-preservation) to witness a grueling argument between
wild-haired-leftist Peter Marcuse, head of Urban Planning, and
an urbane (!) head of Urban Design, Alex Cooper (not yet famous
but locally admired for innovative urban design under John
Lindsay's mayoralty). The argument was about how to get money
from cash-cow preservation into their off-market programs, who
would live and who would fold.
Jim knew how to pickpocket preservation (doing so in practice)
by bum-kissing Ada Huxtable and the Blue-Haired Astors (my
forte too), and he wanted me to instruct these smug know-alls.
Well, I tried to be a benevolent Plato and they chopped my
liver. Their pride could not admit that the sun had set on
their sacred scams. While once both fields had good press,
paying customers (see list above), now they needed
over-the-transom HP pittance.
Jim Fitch, head of preservation, was fighting JPolshek
fiercely, for his populist-rich program while fighting CU for
retiree lucre. Finally, JimP made a Kissingerian deal to get
Fitch a magnanimous CU retirement so he could lift HP bucks to
pay Peter and Alex and RAMStern and the Extortionate Gang.
(OTOH, I got jackbooted for a totally related CU scam, but
that's another story.)
Urban Design at CU (and now worldwide) once was about good
design in the old built-environment sense but now it's
promoting pan-design in the Woolsworthian sense -- law,
planning, development, preservation, architecture, exterior
decoration, just about anything that will bring in small
change. Just like Architecture, Urban Planning, Preservation
and REDevelopment, they all watch and lift and copy each other.
For this reason, they are all a little lightweight on the
dignified-credibility public-interest scale -- it's hard to
tell which is which.
Coda of hope: one of the first, and I think best, UD CU profs
was Aldo Giurgola; but he's self-exiled down under -- an
exemplary urban design decision to ponder. Maybe he'll return
to lead us out of the variety store. But I doubt it, not after
the Balladeers of Beloved Variety Emporia gang-banged him for
Kimballing-Kimball.
John