Redefining Urban Planning

The young discipline of urban planning is often presented to students and external researchers as having a single storyline. Learning about the history of one’s discipline is important to understand its impacts but remains, without doubt, biased. Focusing on the built successes of past urban planners, planning history reinforces the voice of white cisgender male figures. The paternalistic nature of such discourse encourages the perception that we, planners, have the answers to urban issues and that the continuity of said issues is caused by other levels of authority choosing to ignore our wisdom. However, urban planning is much more complex than this. The discipline itself is dated to be no more than a decade. Before the recognition of the profession, cities were still planned, in other ways. Sandercock speaks of the multiple histories that are at the base of urban planning, by including insurgent planning in the historiography (1998). A striking example included in her work is the Blues epistemology, which includes music as an alternative form of change (1998). If protest through music is considered as a form of urban planning, can other types of activism be included in the process as well? In an era of performance activism, this idea may find several opponents. The truth remains that grassroots movements have increasingly taken their seat at the table, widening the horizons of what is considered urban planning. Modern practice now considers the efforts of many involved parties, which includes all governing levels. Future classes on planning history will surely present a much different vision of what is and is not planning.

References

Sandercock, L. (1998). Towards Cosmopolis. Chichester: Wiley.

Living City Cores: Reclaiming the City One Step at a Time

It’s September, early in the morning. I stand on the front doorsteps and breathe in the fresh air. The morning dew brings an ethereal look to my surroundings and takes me back to first-day-of-school photoshoots. I start walking, opus card in hand, ready to take over the city once again. This time it is real; we are heading back to school, office, library. We are ready, the city is ready, to welcome life in its center again.

Fast-track to the metro: a delayed car on the orange line. Only this time, there does not seem to be animosity in the air. Is it possible to long for an inconvenience? After spending so much time in our homes, it seems that the collectivity enjoys on some level the time spent traveling. However, the desire to get back to our pre-pandemic lives might not compensate for the reality of the present routine. Practically nothing has changed, except for new buildings here and there in the downtown core.

Heading back to the city brings a fresh perspective over the problems to fix and the path we should take towards better urban planning. Mary Rowe of the Canadian Planning Institute associates in an interview the pandemic with a ‘particle accelerator’, explaining that city issues ‘manifest themselves now in a much more acute way’ (Saunders, 2020). Considering the economic impact of the last year, it may even take longer to solve such amplified issues, while tackling the new demands of climate change and public health. What lies in front of us is a rethinking of the human factor in cities in a modern context, which will take years to fully input.

In the meantime, smaller changes will take place, one at a time. Urban design and transportation have been at the center of attention, being fields where modifications can be implemented quickly. In North America and Europe, more space is opened up to pedestrians and bikers or being reinforced through older projects (Leigh, 2020). An interesting Covid-19 direct response is the city of Oakland’s ‘Slow Street’ program, closing up to 119 km of the street to prioritize shared access (City of Oakland, 2021). The challenge lies in choosing which solution will provide the best transition to longer-lasting redevelopment. Only time will tell.

References

Leigh, Gweneth Newman. (2020, September 15). Reimagining the post-pandemic city. Architecture AU. https://architectureau.com/articles/reimagining-the-post-pandemic-city/

Saunders, Doug. (2020, November 14). The urban cure: How cities seize opportunity from the pandemic  crisis to change how they operate for the better. The Globe and Mail. https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-the-urban-cure-how-cities-seize-opportunity-from-the-pandemic-crisis/

Cornelia Hahn Oberlander: A Role Model in Environmentally and Socially Conscious Landscape Architecture

Cornelia Hahn Oberlander, a German-born Canadian landscape architect, was recognised as a national treasure in Canada. She was honored with the Inaugural Governor General’s Medal in Landscape Architecture in 2016 by the Canadian Society of Landscape Architects (CSLA). In 2019, the Cultural Landscape Foundation established the Cornelia Hahn Oberlander International Landscape Architecture Prize in her honor. She was born in Muelheim-Ruhr, Germany in June 1921 and immigrated to the United States in late 1938. She was amongst the first female landscape architects upon graduating from Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design’s Landscape Architecture Program in 1947. In 1953, with her husband H.Peter Oberlander, who set up the first city planning school in Canada at UBC, the pair moved to Vancouver.

Cornelia Hahn Oberlander’s designs emphasized exposure to nature for its healing effect, as well as providing opportunities for social interaction in public spaces. Moreover, she recognized early on the climate change crisis and tried to mitigate its effects through her green designs. Some of her noteworthy projects include: the landscape of the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa, VanDusen Botanical Garden in Vancouver, the Museum of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver’s Robson Square Provincial Government Center and Courthouse Complex, the Canadian Chancery in Washington D.C, and the Children’s Creative Center for Expo 67 in Montreal. Unfortunately, after practicing landscape architecture for more than sixty years, she died from complications of COVID-19 in May 2021 at the age of 99 in Vancouver.

Reckoning with Our Past for A Better Future: The Seventh Generation Principle

After spending upwards of the last 16 months dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic, planners find themselves at a crossroads where we are tasked with making decisions to mitigate the effects of future pandemics. This is the time to really look at alternative frameworks that challenge the status quo of dealing with problems only once they arise.

One alternative framework with promise is the seventh generation principle. Originating from The Great Law of Haudenosaunee Confederacy, the seventh generation principle refers to the practice of considering the ramifications of all major public decisions, with the specific goal of maintaining a sustainable future for at least seven generations down the line (Joseph 2020). While in its original context, this principle was heavily tied to environmental maintenance, I posit there are other areas where this type of thinking could be useful. We, as contemporary planners, often spend too much time dealing with present issues, while, in turn, neglecting more persistent, long-term issues as they seem out of our range. Perhaps, these issues like climate, public health, infrastructure revival, etc… require our consistent attention in order to be maintained for the long-term future.

References

Joseph, B. (2020). What is the seventh Generation Principle? Indigenous Corporate Training Inc. https://www.ictinc.ca/blog/seventh-generation-principle

Public Rooftop Garden and Respite in the City: Vancouver Public Library Central Branch Rooftop Garden

Rooftop gardening is trendy in Vancouver and the city encourages people to grow plants on rooftops, community gardens, balconies, etc. One such rooftop can be found at the Vancouver Public Library (VPL), the unique building designed by Canadian architect icon Moshe Safdie, was completed in 1995. It is one of Vancouver’s downtown landmarks, it catches the eye, resembling the Colosseum in Rome. VPL’s green roof takes up 20,000 square feet of the available 28,000 square feet at the top of the structure. The roof was initially transformed to a functioning green roof that was inaccessible to the public. Recently an expansion project of the eighth and nineth floor made two new publicly accessible outdoor rooftop spaces. The first, two large outdoor terraces on the north and south of the eight floor, each being approximately 4,700 square feet. The second, a public rooftop garden on the ninth floor, about 7,400 square feet, which provides an outdoor public green space as a retreat from the busy downtown.

The Phillips, Hager and North Garden on the ninth floor is the first publicly accessible rooftop garden in Vancouver. It provides a natural meeting place in downtown with its great vantage views. To recognize their positive impact on the city of Vancouver through their charitable pursuits, the garden is named in honor of city builders and philanthropists Art Phillips, Bob Hager and Rudy North. VPL’s rooftop public garden is designed by landscape architect icon Cornelia Hahn Oberlander, who was the original designer of its green roof. It features green and blue fescue, reflecting the shape of the Fraser River. The plants that can be found in it are native to the southwest region of British Columbia, resistant to drought and requiring little maintenance. Moreover, a solar photovoltaic system, including 52 solar panels, 350 watts each, is installed along the outside of the rooftop garden. They provide renewable energy and generate approximately 16,500 KW of electricity per year, enough to power the LED lights of the ninth floor of the library. As many other green rooftops, this garden benefits the city of Vancouver in many ways, from helping with rainwater, regulating temperature, improving air quality, to providing a habitat for coexistence with birds and insects, and creating an informal outdoor public space.

Figure 1. Vancouver Public Library Rooftop Public Garden. Image source: Sahar Alinezhad, Vancouver, 2021.

Figure 2. Vancouver Public Library Rooftop Public Garden, view of the BC Place. Image source: Sahar Alinezhad, Vancouver, 2021.

The power of networking: building resilient neighborhoods

This past weekend, the Sustainable Favela Network (SFN) – a project led by Brazilian NGO Catalytic Communities (CatComm) – hosted its first international exchange online event. During the event grassroots leaders and activists shared their work and efforts to develop community-based initiatives that strengthen environmental sustainability and social resilience in informal settlements and underinvested communities worldwide. Most tackled some of the biggest challenges that our society faces, such as reducing poverty, providing accessible education, promoting gender equality and climate actions.

In a world where many communities have often been treated as illegitimate by their governments and excluded from discussions and debates about the plans for the future of their cities, this knowledge-sharing experience highlighted some of the innovative strategies that have been helping residents of informal settlements not only to imagine, plan and build their own future but also to claim a meaningful role in creating a city that embraces them and recognizes their rights.

Listed here are some of these astonishing projects. If you are as passionate as I am about participatory design processes, I am sure they will be a great source of inspiration. Check them out!

1.       The favela Museum – Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

2.       The Human City Project / Chicoco Radio - Port Harcourt, Nigeria.

3.       The Point CDC  - Bronx, New York, USA.