urban words @urban-words - Tumblr Blog

“A waterfall flows in downtown Portland, Ore., ribbons and rivulets of water cascading over slabs of rough, reddish concrete into pools filled with wading children in the summer.” Lawrence Halprin review by the New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/23/arts/design/celebrating-a-rugged-vision-of-landscape-architecture.html

urban-words

So excited about this one.

#modernism #landscape architecture

hyperallergic

New York’s Second Avenue Subway opened on January 1 after almost a century of planning, with new art installations by Chuck Close, Sarah Sze, Vik Muniz, and Jean Shin! 🎉🎉🎉

(all photos by Allison Meier for Hyperallergic)

Check out our full photo essay here.

#transit

transitmaps

Submission - Los Angeles Metro in the Style of the 1972 New York Subway Map by Cullen McCormick

Submitted by Cullen, who says:

A few months back you answered a question of mine with some tips for preparing artwork for inkjet printing. Everything printed great, so thanks again for your help! Thought you might enjoy seeing the finished map.

Transit Maps says:

I always say that if you’re going to do an “in the style of” map, you should aim to replicate the source as closely as possible. That’s how you learn what made the original map tick, and that can help inform your future design decisions. And Cullen’s map has certainly nailed the look and feel of the original 1972 Vignelli New York Subway Diagram perfectly – from the colours and the typography, right down to the 10x10 grid and the reworking of the LA Metro’s logo to pay homage to the 1970s NYCTA logo (a very nice touch!).

The map itself shows a potential near-future Los Angeles after the completion of the Regional Connector: note that the Blue and Gold lines have been realigned (with the Gold merging with the current Expo line), and all the routes have been assigned letter designations. These letters and routes come from this 2015 Metro report (PDF), and certainly help complete the “New Yorkification” of this diagram. What’s a real city without an “A” train, right?

Our rating: Pretty much perfect. Five stars.

#maps #transit maps #los angeles

modernism-in-metroland

Terminal One, Heathrow Airport (1968) by Frederick Gibberd & Partners.

Airport terminal opened in 1968 to be the base for British Airways domestic and European flights. It was designed by Frederick Gibberd & partners as part of their master plan for the construction of the airport, and was the largest in Europe at the time of opening.

Images from RIBApix

#architecture #modern architecture #airports

99percentinvisible

Where is America’s Heartland?

A poll by the New York Times

#maps

dezeen

David Romero recreates Frank Lloyd Wright buildings in colour visualisations ›

#architecture #modern architecture

dezeen

Snøhetta adds crinkled stainless-steel extension to 1960s museum in Norway ›

#architecture #contemporary architecture

mcmansionhell

A Pictorial History of Suburbia

\Hello friends! Sorry for all the delays this week- exams were brutal and so was the stomach flu. Now that I am feeling better, I want to present the last Sunday post of the year - the remaining weeks will be devoted to the McMansionHell 2016 cluster-you-know-what retrospective, which should be very exciting. By the New Year, McMansion Hell will have a new logo, and a fresh dossier of topics, so stay tuned!

On to business!

Introduction

We are all familiar with exurbia - the sleeper cities in which our beloved McMansions loom over the non-existent sidewalks. However, this way of living is very recent in the grand scheme of history, even in America whose history is very short.

Dallas, TX and Suburbs by Andreas Praefcke (CC-BY-SA 3.0)

The suburb is as old as the English language itself - the word dates back to Chaucer - but the exurb, and other contemporary ways of ordering our lives is very recent, its origins begin around 1945. By 1970, the exurb had reached its final from: the SLUG (Spread-out, Low-density, Unguided Growth.)

But to know the present, we must first, of course, understand the past.

A Visual History of Neighborhood Shapes (1750-1940)

Before there were suburban areas, there were, of course, urban areas. Until around the 1850s, most people in America either lived in the urban cores of cities or in rural towns. The rural towns remained pretty much unchanged until around 1940 when many of them were absorbed into the sprawling cities.

The Early Urban Core (1750-1850)

From around 1750-1850, the urban core was pretty simple. A city would usually form around some sort of natural resource, usually a body of water, and was usually planned in a grid formation. The houses were narrow, almost always attached or semi-detached, and had no front yard. (1)

Chicago in 1836. (Open in new tab for full res)

The Urban Expansion (c.1830-1900)

In the 1850s, the cities began to expand, thanks to help of inventions like the horse-drawn streetcar, ferries, and cable cars. These expansions adopted the attached house format of the inner city, but detached housing also existed, especially in the Midwest. (2)

Allentown, PA in 1855

The Railroad Suburbs (1850-1930)

In the 1860s, the first true suburbs were born, thanks to the steam railroad. These neighborhoods were a bit more sprawled out: detached houses became the norm, along with small front yards and detached garages. Houses tended to congregate around rail stops, with the fanciest houses being the closest to the railroad.

Louisville, KY in 1873. Note railway suburbs in the top left corner.

The Streetcar Suburbs (1890-1930)

The invention of the electric streetcar in 1887 furthered a linear sprawl outside of the city. The houses remained more detached, with paved sidewalks. The goal again was to be closest to the streetcar lines.(3) Many of these neighborhoods featured mail order houses from Sears Roebuck, Aladdin, or Montgomery Wards. Streetcar suburbs would remain popular until the 1930s.

Philadelphia, PA in 1898.

Copy of a page from a 1912 Sears Roebuck Mail-order house catalog

Early Automobile Suburbs (1915-1940)

Los Angeles, CA in 1917

The 1910 Ford Model T brought motoring, previously a pastime of the wealthy, into the homes of the average Americans. By 1929, four out of five families owned a car, and by 1920 new developments were designed to accommodate these new motorists.

These developments, which no longer relied on walkability, were sprawled out with often curvilinear streets. Sidewalks were beginning to be omitted, and access to public transit was a non-issue.(4)

Early Auto Suburb, via Library of Congress.

By this point, houses were detached with wide lots spanning 40 feet+ across, front yard setbacks, and a front driveway. These suburbs were not transit-hostile, but they often joined up with main city streets causing enormous amounts of traffic, leading to issues further on. However, the Great Depression put a hold on this type of development, and the housing market in general was crippled until the start of WWII.

True Suburbia, 1940-1980

The Post-WWII suburbs began in 1934 Federal Housing Administration, which implemented strict subdivision and planning rules. However, the effects of these rules didn’t really materialize until the 1940s, since the 1930s housing market was so incredibly sluggish - something not helped by the fact that nonessential construction was prohibited during the war to conserve resources.

Over these years a massive demand for housing was being built up, and the demand for new homes was insatiable. The new FHA guidelines mandated that new housing developments be free of direct through-traffic, which completely changed the way neighborhoods were designed.

Levittown, PA

Most of these neighborhoods were built beyond the edge of the city, where many towns were planning on building a federally-subsidized highway, with a system of attached arterials (high volume streets). The system of streets were designed so none could be used as a shortcut to other areas as a web of curvy loops and cul-de-sacs.

Ohio Turnpike, 1950s. National Archives.

The houses in these developments were placed on wide lots spanning 100 feet or more, with long blocks (often omitting sidewalks), front driveways, and attached garages. Mass building techniques from the war period (such as prefabrication) made the rapid construction of nearly-identical homes easy and extremely cheap.

1950 Gunnison Homes Catalog by Jennifer Sale (CC-BY-NC-2.0)

This pattern of development was the norm until the era of exurbia, around the 1980s, the era of the SLUG.

What Was Before: Rural Towns Before Exurbia

I’m going to take a minute here to focus on the rural developments that were a mainstay of American life until the adoption of the car.

McKinney, TX in 1876.

These places often centered around a singular industry, most often agriculture and related processes. These developments were often passed through by trains by the middle of the 19th century, however they rarely ever developed past this point and were late to adopt the car.

Rural towns often have one or two Main Streets, with a mixture of different house and lot types, sizes, and uses - something that was permissible before zoning laws were in place.

Lynn, MA in 1820.

These areas are walkable out of necessity, with shops located in the center of town. The idyllic American ideal of low-density living, walking to the store and knowing all of your neighbors is an inherently rural phenomenon. The adoption of zoning regulations has made these types of developments almost impossible to replicate, despite their beloved, (if often bucolic) reputation.

Many of these small towns disappeared during the outward expansion of the 1950s-80s, or were abandoned as agricultural work became scarce during the Great Depression. Some, however, are still thriving, particularly those in the Midwestern US where farming is still a common career path.

Exurbia - Neighborhoods of Wasted Space

Exurbia is a low-density community built on previous farmland that requires a car trip to complete the most basic tasks, such as grocery shopping. It is a bedroom community - the working population commutes (by car) to work, and the young population goes to school.

These communities arose from the same desire to prevent through traffic, and the desire for gated communities and luxury amenities such as golf courses. The FHA’s desire to prevent adjacent non-conforming uses (aka commercial spaces or other walkable amenities) eliminated local commerce and relegated every little interaction to big box stores and the car.(5)

A Cincinnati Suburb. Public Domain.

The Federal Highway Act of 1956 that enacted the interstate system only made these types of developments more and more frequent, furthered by more and more highway spending over the years.

As for the types of homes in these subdivisions? Well…

…it’s McMansion Hell.

I hope you enjoyed this tour of suburban history, supplemented by drawings by me (based on observations from the books in the works cited section below.) Stay tuned for a Thursday DOUBLE FEATURE, and next Sunday’s McMansion Hell Retrospective!

If you like this post and want to see more like it as well as get access to behind-the-scenes content, consider supporting me on Patreon!

Also, be sure to check out the Certified Dank McMansionHell Store! 30% of proceeds go to architectural preservation/environmental charities.

All photos in this post are Public Domain unless otherwise noted.

Works Cited:

Main Source:

McAlester, Virginia Savage. A Field Guide to American Houses: The Definitive Guide to Identifying and Understanding America’s Domestic Architecture. Random House Inc, 2015.

Specific citations:

(1) Ibid. p.62 (2) Ibid. p. 63 (3) Ibid. p. 67 (4) Ibid. p. 68 (5) Duany et. al. p. 96

Ancillary Sources:

Duany, Andres, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, and Jeff Speck. Suburban nation: the rise of sprawl and the decline of the American Dream. New York: North Point Press, 2010.

Jackson, Kenneth T. Crabgrass frontier: the suburbanization of the United States. New York: Oxford University Press, 1985.

#cities #suburbs

99percentinvisible

For the seventh consecutive year, Curbed’s own Alexandra Lange and the critic Mark Lamster of the Dallas Morning News cover the ups and downs, triumphs, and tragedies of the year in design.

A slew of perfectly made-up awards

#architecture #contemporary architecture #architectural criticism

new-brutalism-deactivated201811

Barbican Estate 15, City of London, Chamberlin Powell and Bon, 1965-1976

Photo: Simon Phipps

#architecture #brutalism

99percentinvisible

When many lower-income Americans feel isolated and empty, they yearn for physical social networks. All across US, this happens organically at McDonald’s

#cities