Defining "Urban"

The question of what exactly is urban America has come up in several recent readings, including Witold Rybczynski's City Life. In his book, Rybczynski leads us through the history of urbanism in America to try to imagine what our future cities will look like. He proposes that American urbanism is based in change and restlessness. From the very beginning, this vast, open continent we live in has spurred the idea that we as a country and society can always grow and reach better horizons. Our definition of "urban," therefore, keeps changing. From the industrial age when the typical city came with access to power sources, overcrowding, pollution, and other qualities we traditionally associate with cities, to the decentralized city in which a condensed urban area is served by a series of less dense, or suburban, areas, our idea of what landscapes compose a city has changed with our changing desires as a society. 

The decentralized city itself is very much an American fabrication and my old stomping grounds, Chicago, acts as a perfect model for this type of urbanism. Chicago is a city of largely residential neighborhoods that surround and serve a downtown area (the word "downtown" originated in America). The idea behind this configuration was the idea that people want to work, shop and play in one location but live elsewhere as long as these two were closely linked by (public or private) transit. The question then becomes, does this elsewhere become part of the urban definition? 

Perhaps, to define urban as it applies to this country, we must also define suburban. Just the term, suburban has become a stereotype, where as the actual suburbs include many different types of landscapes. The only defining difference we have between urban and suburban is political: what politically lies within the boundaries of a city. The earliest planned suburbs were thought of as urban entities by their designers and often included urban elements belonging to big cities, just at a smaller scale.

 All of these images can be defined as "suburban" landscapes, is one considered more suburban than the other? 

(Sources: fp.images.autos.msn.com, www.newyork.com, www.homesandproperty.co.uk) 

As our definition of urban begins to change once again, there is a chance that these formerly "suburban" landscapes will become our new urban forms, or something close to them. After all, our definition of urban has always been a reflection of our changing desires for the type of environment we want to live in. With the current dissolution of the traditional nuclear family and a changing political landscape in America comes a desire for a more mixed experience in our physical environment-one that allows for a variety of services, interactions and a level of convenience not felt in traditional suburban locations. Indeed, our suburban areas stand to become much more pro-urban than ever before.

Global City

While Spike Jonze's new movie. "Her" provides a chilling outlook on our relationship with technology, it also paints a frightening image of our future cities. It is suggested that Theodore, the movie's main character, lives in Los Angeles, however, in image, this future Los Angeles is composed quite literally of pieces from two different cities across the globe from each other: L.A. and Shanghai. The pieces themselves are not images we would immediately associate with either city, and so the effect is a city that we as humans can at once all relate to, but are unable to pinpoint to a specific place. To reinforce this idea, the composition of the general public is a happy mixture of all sexes, cultures, and races-lending to its familiarity and lack of "there-ness." The suggestion is, perhaps, that we are standardizing ourselves into a corner.

A scene from the movie, Her, supposedly set in Los Angeles.
 Source: whatdidnatthinkofit.com. 

The Lujiazui skyline in Pudong, Shanghai. Look familiar?
Source: wikipedia.org

With the ability of technology to collapse time and space comes an ability to standardize on a global scale and the lack of uniqueness that our cities are facing. Think of the ubiquity of Starbucks, bike share programs, and infrastructure turned parks in cities around the world. Even the elements that try to set cities apart are quickly copied by cities everywhere in a hope to reap the same benefits. The Highline in New York is a poster child for this idea. While the base infrastructure of the Highline park is unique to New York, the idea of an elevated park on an old train line was quickly reproduced in cities across the world, hoping to capture the same economic, cultural and social benefits.

The public in "Her" is a heterogeneous mix of people from across backgrounds.
Source: screenrant.com 

To say something about the movie's main message, Jonze captured the essence of technology's ability to change how we interact (or don't) with the world as well as how we interact (or don't) with each other. TV shows like Catfish, on MTV, and the love stories featured in the New York Time's Modern Love column show a growing trend among us to live further apart but use technology to bring us emotionally, if not physically, together. In this there is an irony-with a growing urban population word-wide, we are living closer to others than ever before. So, why do we need technology to close the time/space gap and feel intimate with other humans when there are humans all around us? In "Her," Theodore is constantly surrounded by other people-on the street, in the office, at the beach, and yet he feels completely alone. This feeling seems to be spurred on by the lack of "uniqueness," of being a small fish in a big pond, and an inability to see any impact that he has on the world around him. Perhaps, we humans and our cities face the same crisis: an identity crisis occurring on drastically different scales.

The In-Between: Dead City

Riding the train to work, I regularly stare half-caffeinated at the New York City subway map and wonder about the beige spaces between subway lines-what's there? This prompted a series of investigations of what might be called the "in-between" spaces. Armed with camera and curiosity, I set out to a snowy Sunnyside, Queens for the first of the in-between investigations.

What I found was Calvary cemetery, a sprawling cemetery hemmed in on its sides by expressways and other large pieces of infrastructure. This created an island of stillness among the constant flow of traffic; a stark contrast between the permanence of death and the constantly changing and moving city. Some of the photos I took are below.