John King of the San Francisco Chronicle points out the presence of newly ubiquitous products, objects, and spaces in our cities nowadays, that individually and together speak volumes about what living right now is like:
Even as lifestyles and cultural trends blur, not moored to any particular era or place, the scenery is littered with clues that could exist only in the here and now.
Some are blatant, such as iPod cords hanging from ears or the pernicious ooze of advertising (now it's on supermarket floors) or the already ubiquitous cell phone camera.
Some are place-specific, such as the "Impeach Bush" bumper stickers in Berkeley and San Francisco. And some could illustrate the word "incongruous" in the dictionary, such as the satellite dishes (and solar panels) that adorn balconies of mock-Tuscan condo complexes.
Omnipresent in the city of 2006 are thoughts of "security," placing the practice of urban design on the front lines, and embedding in the streetscape a subtle, even almost charming, sense of paranoia:
They now come in a jaunty nautical style. And a somber federalist version. There's a shiny, sleek modernist type, a pueblo model -- some even fashioned into giant, pseudo golf balls. Whether made of copper or bronze, aluminum or granite, all could stop an eight-ton truck barreling into them at 50 mph. Bollards, those crude posts once relegated to parking lots and now considered a necessity in a security-conscious era, have become as fashionable and versatile as handbags. And they are everywhere.
Along those lines, King points out skateboard clips, which join the "pleasure dots" that stud the metal surfaces alongside subway escalators in providing strong disincentives to moving through public space in unconventional ways. (Which is why parkour, or even the idea of play in the city, becomes a radical idea.) These too are ever more stylized, passing themselves off as innocent, well-intentioned articulation of surface, or even the expression of a sense of place:
On the Embarcadero in San Francisco -- where the much-battered "ribbon" was perhaps the first place to sport clips -- ledge seating in Rincon Park is adorned with bronze starfish and sea turtles designed by artist Ronnie Frostad that, not coincidentally, serve as skating obstacles. Now the product line of the El Cajon firm Skatestoppers includes an "architectural series" with such imagery as frogs, maple leafs and flowers to "add an artistic flair to any application."
Yet these could just be new iterations of an age-old impulse inherent in urban planning and design to direct behavior and movement (ask Baron Haussmann). And this impulse can create new foci and new civic spaces for cities, to the benefit of their residents:
Anyone who's driven through England -- or New England, for that matter -- has encountered the amiable bits of inconvenience known as traffic circles or roundabouts. You come to an intersection that isn't really an intersection, it's a swirling whirligig with fancy stuff in the middle. Instead of barreling through, you slow down, check all the angles, move carefully....Theoretically, these will be treated with more respect than oft-ignored stop signs; once the novelty wears off, who knows. But the long-term effect is a plus, with trees and shrubbery in place of asphalt (assuming they're well maintained, of course).
The informal, decentralized social connections of today could exacerbate demand for such measures, King notes. Could the proliferation of roundabouts and the desire for transit nodes be some sort of urban-scale echo of booming wi-fi cafe culture (ie., you can get anywhere from here)? More than anything, people seem to want to exist in spaces that are expressly about possibility:
The proliferation of cafes itself is a sign of the times, a structural gesture to the ephemeral virtues of community and collegiality and a Third Place where we can find eddies of calm within the swirling vortex of modern life. Ahhhh. That's the image. The reality is: Grab caffeine and fire up. No time to pause! Blackberries and the Internet beckon!
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