CNU diary 2021

 

Monday, May 17 (Day -2)

The Congress for the New Urbanism conference officially gets underway Wednesday, but I'm all for taking advantage of the two days of workshops and special sessions ahead of the conference proper. Instead of Oklahoma City as originally planned, for the second year in a row we're online. I'm abuzz with curiosity as to how these conferences work in person!

Ashleigh Walton (goarchitect.com)

The first CNU29 session I attended was "Principles of New Urbanism" at 2:30 p.m. CT, featuring architect-designer Ashleigh Walton with former CNU president Victor Dover. She defined new urbanism as "radical (a reversal of typical development patterns), simple (a look back to the most loved places), practical (real/efficient/scalable/long-term), and for everyone (providing choices at every scale of development, from the metro region down to the single lot)." The goal is to "affect both policy and design" in order to build "places people love," but also places that provide more economic value to cities. She also touched on specific topics like the transect, form-based codes, and missing-middle housing. 

• One question was how do urbanists reconcile the increased value they create with the need for affordable housing? Walton said affordability came with choices and supply, which are also concerns of urbanism. To another questioner, she said "the best urbanism tends to not be new" infrastructure, but she cited Charleston SC, Greenville SC, Huntsville AL, and Sewickley Heights PA as towns that are currently pursuing different interesting projects. 
• The biggest hurdles to spreading the word are the perception of exclusivity; Dover added the fear of any change because previous changes have been negative. The session served not only an introduction for new attendees, but a rededication for long-time members, like members of a church hearing a creed or familiar scripture.

I also attended "Land Use Planning and Structural Racism: Unpacking the Link," in which Jess Zimbabwe of Environmental Works presented an ingenious "alphabet book" of planning-design indignities that have been inflicted on people of color (B for blockbusting, C for covenants, e.g.).

Marguerite Yourcenar

Before all that, however, I visited a Coe colleague's non-CNU webinar on a short story by Marguerite Yourcenar (1903-1987). "A Blue Tale," written in the 1920s but not available in the United States until 1995, describes the voyage of some European merchants to a mysterious island rich in blue gems, which they take, but these gains eventually lead them to bad ends. My colleague, Joyce Janca-Aji, saw the story as "an introduction to non-dualistic thinking," seeking an alternative to commonplace western dualities like mine/yours, human/nature, economic/spiritual that have contributed to the messes in which we now find ourselves. Like Yourcenar's ecofeminism, urbanists seek to recover premodern practices and language that can allow us to make the changes we need to make. "By telling our stories," she concluded, "We may have better outcomes."

Janca-Aji described Yourcenar as "wildly hopeful." I could use some of that wild hope as I mourn my way through books like Jane Mayer's Dark Money (Doubleday, 2016) and Angie Schmitt's Right of Way (Island, 2020)... excellently researched and written books that describe two of our worst western messes. May I find some wild hope this week!

Tuesday, May 18 (Day -1)

OK, here's a thing about online versus on-site conferences: On site--say, in Oklahoma City--you are fully present, even immersed in the place where you are. This morning, a situation came up at work with a difficult colleague, and I found myself chewing on that all day even during the most stimulating of presentations. Were I in "OKC," I might not even have been aware of the problem!

This year's conference is exploring how urbanism can be used to address pressing social problems, like climate change, equity, and the aftermath of the pandemic. At 10:30 CT Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, co-author of the ur-text Suburban Nation [North Point, 2000], talked about how urbanism might contribute to climate change adaptation. She distinguished "adaptation" from "mitigation," as dealing with the effects of climate change (resilience) as opposed to trying to prevent it (sustainability). For that reason, I've always been morally ambivalent about adaptation, but she showed how urbanism can contribute to its effectiveness. Whether dealing with initial "defense" measures like protecting bridges and buildings,  "accommodation" like the Cedar Rapids flood walls (below), or discussing and executing "retreat" scenarios, urbanism can provide the vision as well as specific examples and rules for social organization. 

Construction of Cedar Rapids flood wall at 16th Av, summer 2020

What about equity? asked moderator and CNU chair Lynn Richards. Plater-Zyberk seemed unready for this, but suggested making it easier for people to move around by removing regulations that make it difficult, and designing better new places in which "everyone is committed to everyone having a good place to live."

What about the towns on the receiving end? The next session dealt with "welcoming cities," potentially places like Cleveland and Buffalo that have lost population for decades but might be suddenly attractive to climate refugees. Cleveland has the space, but even there social integration and preventing displacement would be tough.

My last pre-conference session was Steve Mouzon's talk on the characteristics of lovable buildings--not spectacles loved by architects, but "humane building" that would be attractive to people in the neighborhood. It was 90 minutes of information packed into a little more than 30; the two hosts said they'd seen it before, and I will have to see it again, or replay it at half-speed, before anything sticks.

Unlovable?: Mouzon refers to this building style as "ransom note,"
a term he credits to John Anderson

Wednesday, May 19 (Day 1)

Deanna Van Buren (from designingjustice.org)

The role of design is "to ignite radical imagination," claimed Deanna Van Buren in the keynote address, "Designing for Justice," late this afternoon. She heads a design school in Oakland whose mission is to "un-build racism" by designing alternatives to incarceration. She began with a priceless audio recording of her grandmother talking about her grandmother, who had been enslaved. Un-building racism begins by recognizing our own internalized views which have been shaped by centuries of displacement and dispossession; then we ask what we value, and how we manifest those values. This has meant engaging with formerly incarcerated men and women, which informed the local site selection and the home-like environment of the New Westside Peacemaking Project in Syracuse, a "peacemaking center" for restorative justice. Then followed Restore Oakland, a more comprehensive campus, including a Pop-Up Village service center. She also has been working in Atlanta to retrofit a closed prison, and in Detroit to refashion the streetscape on Grand River Avenue.

Earlier in the day I attended three panels. 

• "Healthy Urban Environments: New Insights from Neuroscience, Psychology, and Mathematics" presented a number of neuroscience, environmental psychology and mathematical perspectives on our issues. All point to human needs both for protection, which we emphasized in the 2020-21 pandemic, and connections, which humans still need and which we still need to facilitate. Biometric research on human reactions to places underscores the need to return to human-scaled design. Panelist Ann Sussman noted people look for people, face-like facades, and something to anchor on like an interesting mural, "so we can 'see' why suburbs aren't walkable." 
• "Equitable Development" looked at some specific ways (affordable housing projects, community land trusts, accessory commercial units) developers have tried to be more inclusive; the panel began with a brilliant graphic "timeline of housing segregation" presented by Marianne Cusato.
• "Suburban Remix: Creating Walkable Density in the Suburbs" looked at a suburban retrofit project along Lyndale Avenue in Bloomington, Minnesota, moving from auto-centric design to one that attempts to ride several of the waves of change including desires for walkable centers, changes in retail, changes in how and where we work, and ongoing demographic and economic change.

A number of social opportunities beckoned in the evening, but after choir rehearsal I was doubting my social synapses. Tomorrow, for sure!

Thursday, May 20 (Day 2)

Veritas Cafe, Cedar Rapids

Before I returned to the conference this morning, I did some urbanism, meeting my friend John Herbert for coffee at the Veritas Cafe downtown. While we were chatting, two other mutual friends happened through and briefly joined us... very third placy!

John asked me how my experience of the conference is different with it being online. I've never been to an in-person CNU... yet! and it is weird just watching webinar after webinar, though the subject matter is compelling. What about the social side? My preference would be to hover on the edge of conversation groups in bars or wherever, but at online CNU the "pub crawl" consists of a succession of small breakout groups. I was fortunate in my second and third groups to be with the jolly and loquacious Andres Duany, who made a substantive if light-hearted case for zoning reform to legalize family compounds. In the first group, tech magician Matthew Lambert called on me so I gave a bit of my background; in the second I participated naturally in the conversation; and in the third I hung back and enjoyed the repartee. I retired after round three. Also, among the first group was Edward Erfurt, who wrote an article I've taught, but I couldn't remember the subject.

Better or worse than crawling at an actual pub? I probably encountered more people, and they had names attached on Zoom, but probably less substantial conversation and no beer unless I fetched it myself from the fridge. Meanwhile, Internet problems meant people were breaking up more and more as the evening went along, which in real life would only happen if I drank to sodden excess. 

The four panels I attended, with varying levels of attention, were:

• (11:45) "Urban Design Update I": salad bar of initiatives, with some websites that might be useful for my first-year seminar
• (1:15) "Zoning for Equitable Development": how form-based zoning and other anti-Euclidean reforms (simplification, compatibility, allowing or requiring renewable energy, local food, landscaping, complete streets, no parking minima, composting and water quality initiatives, ADUs, reduced setbacks, multifamily housing) help to overcome disadvantages created by historic racism. But the in the Q & A someone brought up resistance by black homeowners to zoning reform because it facilitates white/out-of-town landlords buying up properties to subdivide and rent.
• (2:45) "Urban Design in the Universities": 13 academic urbanists talked about what they wish their programs would add or augment, tending towards less aggressive architecture and more attention to context/place
• (4:30) "Pandemic Toolkits at Work": how design is responding or could respond to innovations and changed habits in the last year, without over-correcting for things that have had to pause.

Friday, May 21 (Day 3)

I was glad to start my conference day with some baked goods and coffee at Sykora Bakery in Czech Village. Sykora's is a Cedar Rapids landmark, visited in 1995 by Bill Clinton and Vaclav Havel (along with President Meciar of Slovakia) when they were here to dedicate the new building of the National Czech and Slovak Museum. The building was built for a bar in 1900, and has been a bakery since 1903. While I was there, a mom and son came in after a medical appointment. I took the chance to look at some of the virtual tours on the conference app, starting with Logan Square and Washington Park in the city of my birth, Chicago, Illinois. Logan Square has recently built some affordable housing after undergoing substantial gentrification; Washington Park suffers from under-investment, at least along Garfield Boulevard. Both neighborhoods are rich in art reflecting local heritage, and both offer walkability with at least one dangerous cross of a six-lane street. Then I watched an appealing video about the  new urbanist town of Las Catalinas, Costa Rica, from across the street from Sykora in the Kosek Bandstand.

It's interesting to ponder walkability while in Czech Village, which has repurposed older buildings and human scale, but which lost a swath of housing in the 2008 flood. In fact, much of the core of Cedar Rapids has the pre-World War II bones of a walkable area, but it's definitely been hollowed out over the decades. (A 1930s picture of Bethel AME Church south of downtown shows it surrounded by residences; today it is surrounded by empty lots). There has been a lot of building since 2008; I think I could be happy living in one of the apartments over the businesses that have been rehabbed by an energetic woman named Mary Kay McGrath. For the most part, new construction has been heavy on the condos in New Bohemia and Kingston Village. The surrounding residential neighborhoods, like Wellington Heights and Mound View, have older housing, but not much in the way of basic services.

Today's panels:

• 11:45 "The Post-Pandemic City": Andres Duany ran through a variety of innovations that address newer social needs, including portable housing for the unhoused, an elevated city in flood-prone regions, and field urbanism modeled on warehouse districts which seem to attract young people more than traditional urbanism like Czech Village or Galena. Also compounds again. There were some interesting comments in the "chat," and I wish there had been time for discussion.
• 1:00 "STEP Buildings, the Embodiment of Incremental Development": Gracen Johnson unveiled an ingenious game deck of 49 cards, depicting low-cost housing adaptations, in categories like HOUSE HACKS, MAIN STREET MIXED, NEIGHBORHOOD NODE, and COMBO, so developers and advocates could be "strategic within the rules." Eric Kronborg followed with actual plans with examples of those types of incremental development.
• 2:30 "Urban Design Update II": More urbanism salad. I like salad. Possibly the most controversial presentation was that of planner Bob Gibbs, who said that planned urbanist shopping areas were actually failing at a higher rate than indoor shopping malls. That seems counter-intuitive, but I was at one of those urbanist shopping areas in Virginia in 2018, and it was soulless, like somebody's idea of what a downtown should look like, but uniform in age and the retail was more mall than downtown. 

And so, CNU29 is in the books. It was an interesting few days. CNU30 will be in person, in Oklahoma City, which will be a lot better, except I find it will be in March. So I won't be able to be there, due to prior commitments. One of these years, for sure. I need to raise my networking game, though. This week I was "neither here nor there," literally.

SEE ALSO: "CNU Diary," 8-13 June 2020