Brand Avenue

School Days

A recent essay from the always-interesting New Geography contrasts sharply with conventional wisdom about American college towns, calling them "stifling, boring and obsolescent." To read it is to meditate on whether Thomas Friedman is correct or not in claiming that the world is flat:

And every down-on-its luck town wants to become a college town to attract population, businesses and jobs; they dream of becoming the next Silicon Valley, or at least Alley, by providing just the right mix of public policy and social/cultural atmosphere....

Colleges and college towns have become bastions of intolerance and enforced conformity. Political correctness? That’s not the tenth of it. I’m talking about the stifling of speech, dissent, or any deviation from orthodoxy. Colleges have gone from citadels of intellectual openness to dungeons of intellectual coercion. And in support of what? High ideals such as the canons of Western thought (freedom, liberty, justice, sovereignty of the individual, the inviolability of property rights)? More often, it’s the undermining of the same.

Author Roger Selbert, who goes on to claim that "for most people, college is a waste of time and money," sees a future in which the placelessness of the Internet make the physical campus and the trappings of towns like Berkeley, Boulder, and Ithaca (not to mention places like Oxford or Leiden) irrelevant, even wasteful.

Advances in technology are also making the brick-and-mortar facility increasingly irrelevant. Distance learning, remote learning – call it what you will – will doom the college town. The Internet renders the college library unnecessary; CDs and DVDs obsolete the 8 AM lecture; email and other advanced communication capabilities make office hours unneeded. Giving up the trappings of a campus will reduce costs dramatically, particularly in an era of high energy prices. Once higher education is exposed to market forces, the rationalization of education will be rapid and profound.

Really? If only College Town Life were still online.

Isn't it that the luxuries a college town provides its residents--chief among them an enlightened atmosphere that is accommodating to new ideas, one that exudes youthful energy--are instead its greatest strengths? Isn't it that uniqueness that sets them apart from other places, and aren't natural advantages like these what helps in a global competition for growth and development? Yes, a college town may indulge a greater-than-average amount of civic and personal navel-gazing (something I know firsthand; I grew up in a college town); but isn't this part of the story that sets them apart from other cities? What about the experience of education--regardless of what you think of it--as a branding asset? Is it an accident that college towns and neighborhoods usually fare better in bad economic times than their non-academic brethren?

(Above, the Princeton campus.)

Blake Gumprecht, a professor at the University of New Hampshire, discusses his book The American College Town in a recent interview with Inside Higher Ed:

If they were like every place else, why would we care about them? But they’re not. They are cultural islands. They are exceptional places. They behave differently. They function differently. They are youthful. They are highly educated. They are cosmopolitan. They are free-spirited and progressive. They are cauldrons of creativity. They attract people who are drawn by their sense of difference. College towns lend color to the cultural mosaic that is the United States.

Earlier. (See Gumprecht's photo collections of some quintessential American college towns, here.)

Et Al...

Belated thanks again to the organizers of the Creative Cities Summit for providing so much food for thought during the conference last week. I haven't yet had the chance to mention, let alone digest, all of the things, both local to Detroit and global for the rest of us, that provided much-needed inspiration to me and the others in attendance.

Of particular note, in addition to that which I wrote about last week, was the keynote talk Bill Strickland gave on Monday night. Strickland is the president and chairman of the Manchester Bidwell Corporation, in Pittsburgh, and its subsidiaries, the Manchester Craftsmen's Guild and the Bidwell Training Center. Manchester and Bidwell are non-profit entities; Manchester provide a diverse arts education while Bidwell offers vocational training in a number of different disciplines. Strickland's experience in building the two over the course of his life gives a powerful example of the central role educational opportunity plays in the construction of a city. The richness of a place depends directly on the experience it offers its residents; in Strickland's case, the kinds of professional opportunities usually found lacking in inner-city neighborhoods. Now, Strickland is taking the framework of his centers global, opening similar facilities in other cities throughout the US and abroad.

I'm digging into Charles Landry's The Art of City Making right now, and there is a sentiment early on that resonates here, one that reinforces the notion that social "architecture" is equal, if not greater, than the importance of its physical counterpart:

"The compound city-making is preferred to city-building, since the latter implies that the city is only that which the built environment professions have physically constructed. Yet what gives a city life, meaning, and purpose are the acts people perform on the physical stage. The stage set is not the play. The physical things are only the accoutrements, helpful instruments and devices. But the aim here is to shift the balance, to increase the credibility and status of the scriptwriters, the directors and performers. Countless skills come to mind."

(Above, the exterior of the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit at night, with neon piece by Martin Creed over mural by Barry McGee. via)

One other outstanding talk was the panel centering on "marketing the Creative City" featuring Paul Schutt of Detroit's Issue Media Group, publisher of modeldmedia, which I've mentioned here before; Shawn Micallef of Toronto's superb Spacing Magazine, a paper copy of which I'm currently treasuring; and Jim Townsend, of the Detroit Convention and Visitors' Bureau, and the lead in developing the city's new "D" brand.

One of the more salient points made was Schutt's observation that traditional media sources tend to lack the ability to promote place in a modern way. In a city defined in popular culture by loss (crime, unemployment, flight), the local papers were well-acquainted with how to cover those things, sounding a steady drumbeat of doom and gloom, but little else. What was missing was any discussion about grass-roots, small-scale, positive development. Enter modeldmedia, centered on the myriad unique details, ventures, and changes that aim to paint a more authentic picture of one of America's most storied cities. A task noble, vital, and interesting.

Micallef explained that Spacing filled a similar role in Toronto, originally leaning on freelance artists, photographers, and writers to tell the story of the city that he and his friends cared about--transportation, urban exploration, urban design, and politics, among other topics. What began as a spare-time pursuit for Micallef and his friends has since been celebrated as a critically important new voice in city-building and city-making issues. It's a thing of beauty and inspiration: its "subway buttons" as a wry, affectionate expression of place caught my eye while vacationing there in 2005, and I read its website often. You don't have to be a Toronto resident to glean the significance of Spacing's approach to placemaking; the experience of the publication reflects the experience of the city in such fine-grained detail that one is able to see one's own surroundings with fresh, optimistic eyes.

Doing 100 Things Well

Many good things to highlight today from the Creative Cities Summit, from learning about Doug Farr's merging of sustainability with urban design through the work of his Chicago practice, Farr Associates; to Richard Florida's comments about his ongoing work and the current state of the world economy; to Charles Landry's remarks about architecture, permanence, and the ever-present buzzword of this entire conference--creativity.

- The ongoing development of LEED guidelines for Neighborhood Design (ND) is fascinating for a lot of reasons--how does one codify the combination of human concerns and environmental concerns that shape the design of a neighborhood? And what does "neighborhood" mean, exactly, anyway? Farr pointed out that with LEED-ND, the USGBC for the first time will branch into economic and social realms in the way it distributes points, offering them in such diverse arenas as affordable housing, local food production, and community outreach, thus broadening what constitutes "environmental design."

Simply put, Farr pointed out that "urbanism is the foundation of sustainability," a useful mantra to bear in mind for all the design projects (undoubtedly you know some; I certainly do) that purport to be either urbanistically good or environmentally sustainable, but fail on the other count.

- A high-wattage panel featuring Landry, Florida, and John Howkins, moderated by Carol Coletta of Smart City Radio, supplied a number of provocative points. Memorable for me was Landry's commentary about icons and signature buildings, particularly for smaller cities that seek to raise their profiles: "rather than one icon, do 100 things well that together, become an icon." In other words, avoid the overarching narrative, and look for ways to draw attention to the small, incremental, positive developments (architectural, economic, social, educational, etc) that together, make the image of the city greater than the sum of its parts.  An interesting point vis a vis the potential fallability of a place branding approach.

An associated and similarly good point: that everything is a resource in the creation of place--every indvidual move--which in turn reminds me of the previous post about the Heidelberg Project. Or, to quote a conference organizer on Sunday, "you are a media channel:" your story is also a part; you are also an agent. Your small move is a resource, one that plays a role in the creation of place; and places are made out of, for, and by people.

The thought crosses my mind, no doubt abetted by attending a conference of economic development professionals and not architects, that economic solutions for the cities of the future may supercede architectural solutions in significance, particularly in a place like Detroit where so much raw space just sits, waiting. The where already exists; it's the what that needs imagining. The design problem is economic, not aesthetic. From an architect's standpoint, I wonder if that's right. 

The Only Inexhaustible Resource

Just a (very) few gems among many from today's events:

-  A bus tour of downtown Detroit and its environs, beginning at Belle Isle Park (an Olmsted park in the Detroit River), ending at the hulking mass of the Russell Industrial Center (an immense Albert Kahn factory from 1927, covering 2.2 million sf, being reborn as a workshop to 150 artists, craftspeople, and small-scale entrepreneurs), and covering several fascinating zones in between.

At the midpoint of the tour, the bus stopped at the Heidelberg Project, a semi-abandoned residential block that artist and resident Tyree Guyton has transformed over the last 20 years into one huge canvas.

The photos don't really do justice--to walk along Heidelberg Street and observe its myriad components up close makes a very strong case for the transformational potential of cities, the richness of the urban fabric, and the significance of the public realm. Heidelberg is but one person's reimagination of what Detroit--what Gov. Jennifer Granholm, also in attendance today, called the "poster child for urban reinvention"--could be.

- Pier Giorgio di Cicco, poet laureate for the City of Toronto, mentioned later in the day that creative energy is, in fact, the "only inexhaustible resource we have," which bears repeating here. A creative city, he said, is "a city of loyalty, of affection for itself." It is incumbent upon artists, designers and entrepreneurs, to "bring the delight of invention into the public realm," because "the public realm is the barometer of a healthy city."

-  John Howkins shared a brilliantly simple formula for a critical approach to urban regeneration:

* Enjoy the city (sense it);

* Know the city (map it);

* Use the city (exploit it);

* Maintain the city (sustain it).

Provocatively, Howkins also discussed the pitfalls of identifying sustainability, however nebulously defined, as a goal for urban regeneration. Can something as dynamic and ever-changing as a city be well-served with static, "sustainable" definitions and solutions? Would it not be more appropriate and engaging for them to be unsustainable, fleeting, spontaneous?

More tomorrow...

In the D

Well, for the next few days I'm at the Creative Cities Summit here in Detroit! I've been looking forward to it for a couple of months and am excited that it's finally here.

Since I think there's going to be so much to talk about over the next few days, I'll post daily while I'm in town, to share and record as much of the inevitably thrilling thought spanning placemaking, design, economics, planning, marketing, and urbanism as I can. The list of speakers at the conference is outstanding, and like I said before, I'll do my best to take good notes.

There's also Detroit itself to engage, the centerpiece of the conference; what better place to explore these ideas? What other place can match its story? Can't wait to see some architecture. I'd also like a Coney Island dog.



Above: the city skyline as seen from Windsor, Ontario; via the "best Detroit skyline webpage in the world."

On another note, I'd like to draw your attention to the right hand column, where I've added a new "Also of Mention" list, with links to articles I've read most recently that, well, are also worth reading. One example: this great recent Guardian piece wherein four leading English marketing gurus muse about the branding of place. Or this photo essay about Philadelphia's incredible mural arts program.

More tomorrow...

Islands of LA

Below, a few of the traffic islands that make up the Islands of LA, a "national park" as installation piece.

 

Islands of LA creator Ari Kletzky points out that that while the effort may appear tongue-in-cheek, its underpinnings are serious. What's being promoted is the possibility of the public realm:

...[T]he sign is not a movie ad. Nor part of a clever labeling scheme for city districts. Nor is it a joke. Provocative and whimsical, it’s a prompt meant to take the mind down a side road that’s often as invisible as the traffic island itself. It’s an invitation: ” ‘Come travel here in this idea,’ ” says artist and activist Kletzky, who since last fall has been placing signs across greater Los Angeles – both “Islands of LA” and another, “Shift: Do Art Any Time,” that mimics the city’s ubiquitous “No Parking/Tow Away” placards but done up in an arresting shade of canary.

Kletzky’s aim is as multilayered and unconventional as the city it embroiders, drawing attention to islands of every shape, size and intention....We speed by them – our traffic island archipelagoes – rendering them a blur; or have become so inured to them along our well-worn paths that we tend to stare beyond them. Trapped on them as pedestrians, we find them an annoying interruption between intention and goal, departure and destination. But traffic islands, Kletzky suggests, are “inquisitive places.” They are the pause in the city’s long, rambling monologue to itself.

Kletzky sees opportunity in the oft-overlooked traffic islands of what's likely one of the world's most autocentric cities. They are at once both ubiquitous and individual, a conflation of basic needs and unique circumstances:

Though it’s still early, a cacophony of responses has let Kletzky know he’s onto something. For someone who was feeling isolated, set apart from the city, it has evolved into a way to stitch together community despite the region’s growing congestion and unwieldy expanses. It’s building community out of an idea. “It’s made working in public much more interesting because the public exists,” in it he says. “The project is about using this vehicle of art – slap some wheels on it and see where it goes.” It’s Kletzky’s message in a bottle. “The collaboration is really essential – the repetition of it. It’s in that process that something takes form.”

(thanks, Jason)