2. T R A N S
Cover : Transfer, New York (Mehak Sachdeva 2015)
Inside Cover : Casimir Pulaski Bridge, New York (Christopher Daniel Giamarino 2015)
3. Twenty years have passed since URBAN’s inaugural issue.
In that time, we have enjoyed issues on topics broad and
small, varied and yet somehow the same: dimensions of
scale, identity, globalization; debates on ownership, the
public interest, the academic/practice divide; and overviews
of megaprojects, disaster planning, American car culture,
and notions of the urban utopia. Ever a changing entity, the
very amorphousness of URBAN has enabled the magazine
to be at once a monograph on the contemporary city, a
forum for today’s newest voices, a barometer of the matters
most pressing in our age, and, at times, a provocation.
This small offering you hold in your hand, trans., attempts
to draw on this lineage and celebrate the diversity and
distinctiveness that define urban planning. In putting forth
this small word for you to consider, we deliberately leave
it as a prefix with no succeeding designation that would
more narrowly define an idea. The result is a collection of
thoughts, arguments, conversations, and descriptions that
each address dramatically different subject matter while
maintaining an overall commitment to seeing beyond the
single conception.
Laura Lieto provides us with an introduction to the idea
of trans. and its manifestation in the political and material
world, while Charles Stewart shows us what can happen
when a traditionally exclusive activity is cultivated in the
unlikeliest of gardens. Bringing us to the San Fernando
Valley outside of Los Angeles, Vicente Arellano questions
the importance of art and its provenance. In contrasting
the “he did” with the “yes but he also,” Floyd Lapp incites
to consider for ourselves the legacy of Robert Moses
and the physical reminders we encounter everyday, while
Chris Giamarino gives us a glimpse of some of those very
reminders, often invisible to the daily New Yorker.
Internationalism and locality come to the forefront of Lori
Kahale’s interview with planner Jonathan Manns, while
Abdulla Al Shehhi examines the relationship between
planning and the LGBT community, with some strong
advice for both. Magda Maaoui, in describing France’s
newest efforts at housing construction, offers a critique of
long-standing French planning tools. Finally, Carsten Rodin
and Jack Darcey offer reviews of two recent transgressive
cultural artifacts: a thought-provoking exhibit at New
York’s Museum of Chinese in America and a new book of
memoir-essay-poetry by Wendy S. Walters.
The content in this small volume seeks to draw together
elements that so often exist in separate realms and, in so
doing, tries to convey the importance of fostering some
kind of opposition or of supporting the existence of
difference. In a small magazine such as this one, this idea
makes for enjoyable reading. In the real world, this idea
translates into the essential seedling underpinning the
city and growing its inhabitants into urban actors. The
university, and particularly the urban university, may be the
most natural seat for the nourishment of this seedling: here,
people of different creeds, social classes, races, and beliefs
can interact and share, together, a space of learning. The
maintenance and, indeed, the fostering of different voices
should be a core tenet of the university and, in particular,
of the school of urban planning. To become the sensitive
urban planners that the world demands, we need our
schools to give us – through sight, sound, and, especially,
the professors they hire – an understanding that we are but
a small part of a much larger project, one that requires us
to reach across tracks and beyond borders and through the
many labyrinths we have ourselves created.
We humbly hope these pages communicate this.
Love,
URBAN
LETTER FROM THE EDITORS
T R A N S
4. 17 Rendezvous with Jonathan Manns
Interview
Lori Kahale
19 (Trans)forming Planning: The Inclusion and Seclusion of LGBT Individuals
in Contemporary Planning Theory and Practice
Essay
Abdulla Al Shehhi
21 Housing Transitions: The Tour de France of Construction
Essay
Magda Maaoui
23 Stephen Fan’s Suburbanisms: Casino Urbanization, Chinatowns, and the
Contested American Landscape at the Museum of Chinese in America
Review
Carsten Rodin
25 Wendy S. Walters’s Multiply/Divide
Review
Jack Darcey
SNEAK PEEK
10 Bridges of New York: Studiesof(Un)FamiliarTransience
Photo Essay
Christopher Daniel Giamarino
1 Trans is Back in Town
Essay
Laura Lieto
3 Harlem Lacrosse Levels the Playing Field: Transforming Lives Through Sport
Essay
Charles Stewart
5 The Translocation of Critical Aesthetics
Essay
Vicente Arellano
7 Robert Moses: Visionary or Villain?
Essay
Dr. Floyd Lapp, FAICP
TA B L E O F C O N T E N T S
Lacrosse in Harlem (Charles Stewart, 2015). More on page 3.
5. Trans is back in town after a long absence from the scene
of language. It became popular in the 1970’s, within the
pressing debate about trans-sexuality (a taboo at the time),
and then it migrated to art: trans-avant-garde, performance
art, and postmodernism were all fields where this prefix
made sense of new ways of dealing with the human body,
living matter, and human emotions.
Trans is back in common parlance and academic writings
endowed with new energies. The city, naturally, is the scene
where such a return is taking place.
The city is populated with trans-entities. They become
visible and meaningful alongside the rediscovery of the
materiality of urban life. The new materialism is gaining
currency among different disciplines, as pressing ethical and
political concerns are rising in parallel with scientific and
technological innovation on living matter. Complex issues,
from climate change to the biotechnological engineering
of genetically modified organisms, call for a different
understanding of the relations we have with matter, with
nonhuman things, and how they affect our lives as well as
our moral vision.
The boundaries between the organic and the inorganic,
blurred by cybernetics and biotechnologies, seem less
sharp. The human body is re-shaped by technology and
is no longer an entity confined within its “purely human”
form and boundaries, but rather a prosthetic assemblage – a
cyborg – experiencing connections to material devices of all
sorts – from digital technologies to physical infrastructures
– which enable our bodies to expand, disseminate, and
communicate on a variety of scales.
For urban planners, thinking of the city as a material
assemblage, acknowledging how things enable people to
do other things, is quite a breakthrough. They come to
realize that things are far from being simply brute, passive
matter: they have agency too. This does not mean that trees,
pipelines, door openers, bridges or cell phones have a will
of their own. This means that things and humans always
act in concert, that action is not solely a human issue, that
it occurs in a deeply relational mode in the material world.
Things do unexpected things sometimes. Consider this
example. A traffic light stands to regulate the vehicular
flow at a street corner; an iron chain is wrapped around
it, securing a shopping cart that somebody uses to collect
plastic bottles or cardboard on the streets. This is not just
an inappropriate use of an object, but, as many people
living in big cities know, it is also an unexpected way to use
an object out of the formal logic which has produced it (in
this case, urban traffic regulations). The same traffic light,
doing the job it was meant to do, is also a secure parking
system for those – like New York canners, or Buenos Aires
cartoneros – who commonly use shopping carts to store
waste materials that can be redeemed through the formal
channels and technologies provided by waste recycling
policies. Canners and cartoneros provide themselves with
an informal street-welfare and, to do so, use things in
unexpected ways.
Actionisalwaysnetworkedaction.Itsverymeaning–making
a difference concretely, not just thinking or speaking about
change – is often related to that tiny, humble prefix peeping
out on the stage of language, creeping up anywhere a trans-
actional space is available for those who act and become
“another,” stepping into the messiness and heterogeneity
of the material city.
It this going to be just a “fifteen minutes of fame” business?
I doubt it. I think that trans is back in town and is here to
stay quite long.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Laura Lieto is adjunct visiting professor of urban planning at
GSAPP at Columbia University. She teaches urban planning
theories at “Federico II” University in Naples, Italy.
Trans | URBAN | 2
Prefixes, both in common and specialist parlance, have
their ups and downs.
When these tiny, humble “characters” mark their presence
on the overcrowded stage of language far beyond their
“normal” use, it means they are having their moment, that
they are working as signals of a consistent attention from
the public toward the issues they make sense of. When
attention starts waning, the moment of fame is soon going
to be over. But sometimes they are back, refreshed after a
long wait.
Some years ago it was the moment of inter. Inter-discipline,
inter-relation, inter-connection, inter-national, inter-
generational. A brand new space “in between” – disciplines,
nations, generations, social relations – was born out of the
solid boundaries of the old order of discourse, be it the
traditional division of knowledge into separate fields or
the fragmentation of the European Economic Community
into several nation states. Inter was a little beacon of hope
for those in search of cooperation, collaboration, cohesion,
seeking to open a common ground out of the walls of their
homes, their political parties, their social circles, their fields
of expertise. It became popular in the media, in academic
writing, in everyday parlance, and even in textbooks for
school children.
Such a collaborative ground was the new scene to confront
differences according to the idea that differences matter
and that, despite the triumphant tone of globalization
pundits, they were not drowning into copycat patterns of
cultural apathy. A new sense of respect and confrontation
seemed to be afoot on that common ground signaled by a
little inter. And also, of course, a lot of misunderstandings.
Even on that common ground, however, we have all
stayed the same. We haven’t given up with our irreducible
differences: we don’t have to agree about life, the universe
and everything, but we can still hang out with and learn
from each other.
Urban planners, after a couple of decades of committed
communicative efforts dealing with fair dialogue and
unconditioned respect for differences and minorities, have
realized that cooperating and still disagreeing is a possibility,
TRANS IS BACK IN TOWN
that people can cut deals even in the face of harsh conflicts
about politics, race, gender and religion. The example
of scientists working in inter-disciplinary laboratories,
each with her own language and skills, became a popular
metaphor to envisage planning as a practical endeavor: for
some scholars, planning became a true trading zone, where
getting things done “despite differences” mattered more
than agreeing about life, the universe and everything.
Inter has not disappeared from the scene of language. It
has merely taken a few steps back to allow another tiny
prefix to step forward and finally enjoy its “fifteen minutes
of fame.”
My feeling is that now it is the moment of trans.
Trans is avant-garde. It is about challenging limits. Like the
passing of an Olympic torch, it took the flame carried by
inter and is now trying to move ahead, to make a better
and more difficult performance. Public life is being shaken,
these days, by gender, ethical, political, and biological issues
traced by this tiny pretext in the media, both in common
parlance as well as in academic talk.
Transgender people, genetically modified organisms,
prosthetic bodies – even when these words (at least in
English) do not require trans as a prefix, they all imply what
this prefix, in its etymology, is all about: change.
More precisely, it is about the process of change:
“transitioning.”
As its etymology suggests, trans makes a big difference
compared to inter: trans implies that something or someone
does not stay the same when exposed to otherness; trans-
acting means that, even if we do not give up our differences,
we actually deal with them more openly and – sometimes
– radically. Trans is a matter of hybridizing, not just trading
or making a compromise.
It is about change in terms of putting some status quo at
risk, of becoming a difference by acting, not talking, it out.
Trans is about becoming “another.” Not just dealing with
the Other.
E S S A Y
BY LAURA LIETO
1 | URBAN | Trans
6. Bronx youth. Harlem Lacrosse and Leadership takes this
model one step further by embedding a program director
in schools to recruit, coach, tutor, and mentor students full
time.
Harlem Lacrosse and Leadership’s success is attributable
to many factors. Lacrosse, after all, is an unconventional
sport for an urban community like Harlem. Field time is
expensive and a lacrosse field is nearly as large as a soccer
pitch. Equipment is expensive. Lacrosse players wear up
to six pieces of equipment and have to carry a stick. The
game is not intuitive and technique is only learned through
instruction and repetition, so coaching is a necessity.
Basketball, on the other hand, requires only a ball and a pair
of shoes. Hoops can be found in the majority of city parks
and the community has produced hundreds of collegiate
and professional players over the years. Rucker Park on
155th Street in Harlem is a basketball mecca. Playing
basketball requires much less effort in Harlem than lacrosse,
given that HLL has structured its program with heavy time
commitments and high academic standards. Why, then, has
lacrosse taken hold in this community? The answers may be
transferable to other sports such as tennis, squash, fencing,
or any other endeavors with relatively small participation in
underserved communities and high barriers to entry.
Harlem Lacrosse and Leadership adapts to its environment
by using the urban context as an asset rather than a liability.
Limited space heightens the awareness of the student-
athletes and translates onto a traditional grass field. “Space
and environment creates athletes,” states Joel Censer,
Director of Advancement. He explained that the constraints
of a small field of play mitigate sheer size and speed while
encouraging skill. Comparing the model to Brazilian
soccer players learning the game in favela courtyards and
small indoor courts, he believes HLL’s method of practice
(one grown out of necessity) will provide a competitive
advantage for its student-athletes.
HLL is a non-profit organization that relies on grants,
corporate sponsorships, and individual contributions. The
program has been successful in not only raising funds for
operation, but also facilitating the donation of equipment
from collegiate, high school and youth programs. Fitting
athletes out in equipment from the top programs in the
country has the effect of minimizing the distance between
them and us. Coaches from top programs further serve to
minimize this distance. Access to high quality coaching is
a significant contributor to the program success, and HLL
recruits program directors who are former All-Americans,
team captains, and diligent students. More broadly, talented
former athletes often coalesce in cities and can be leveraged
for the benefit of student athletes in underserved areas.
The uniqueness of the game also contributes to its success,
which again could be applied to other specialized or
“niche” sports. “The newness of [lacrosse] was extremely
important,” Cataldo explains, “because some of these
children have never been told that they’re good at anything
in their life, so when you walk into a room and teach them
math, they automatically think that they’re bad at it because
of everything that’s happened before. But when you teach
them lacrosse, they could be the best player at school on
the first day, and that’s pretty exciting.”2
Incentivizing the
game is important, too. HLL requires students to attend
mandatory study halls, show academic improvement, and
demonstrate good behavior in exchange for the privilege
of playing the game. This strategy solidifies the inextricable
link between sports and academics: one cannot exist without
the other. Timing has played a significant role. Lacrosse is
considered the fastest growing team sport in the country,
with a thirty-eight percent average growth rate among men
and women’s lacrosse on the collegiate level between 2009
and 2014.3
High schools and universities are now recruiting
non-traditional areas such as Harlem aggressively.
Harlem Lacrosse and Leadership recently welcomed over
four hundred guests to their annual fundraiser. The event
concluded with a speech from Eniola Arogundade, a high
school freshman who proclaimed to the crowd his love
for the program as well as his aspiration of enrolling at
Harvard Law School. This took some moxie: the event was
held at the Yale Club. The speech was both humble and
audacious, vulnerable and bursting with courage. I thought
back to Mame. I remembered those same traits in him.
Mame’s simple act of stopping me on the street facilitated
my transformation from a stranger to an active participant
in my community, however briefly. For him, I think, lacrosse
will facilitate a much more significant and life altering level
of transformation.
Choices and opportunities are abstractions. The student-
athlete must seize and harnesses them in order to bring
them to life. Harlem Lacrosse and Leadership and similar
programs that exist or have yet to be formed provide
through sport the foundation for student-athletes to effect
change for themselves and future generations. Their stories
are worth telling in hope that they soon become the rule
rather than the exception.
Notes:
1. http://www.sportsmatter.org/article.html
2. http://news.virginia.edu/content/simon-cataldo-earning-law-
degree-while-growing-harlem-program-leadership-lacrosse
3. http://www.uslacrosse.org/Portals/1/documents/pdf/about-
the-sport/2014-participation-survey.pdf
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Charles Stewart is a first year Urban Planning Student originally
from Annapolis, MD. He has worked both in real estate and as a
lacrosse coach both in the US and abroad.
Trans | URBAN | 4
I am a new resident of New York City. I don’t claim to
understand the dynamics of this place just yet, I continue
to get lost on the subway, and I am still adjusting to the pace
of life. Strangers on the street remain just that. Purposeful
walking and indifference ensure that we continue to exist
as strangers sharing a sidewalk for just a moment in time.
This began to change last month when I traveled from
my apartment on 115th Street and Frederick Douglass to
P.S. 76. I was on my way to coach lacrosse. Headphones
in, determined gait driving me forward through blinking
Don’t Walk signals and under overhead scaffolding, an old
bag slung over my shoulder, I assumed the role of stranger
on the street. There was one difference, however: I was
carrying a lacrosse stick. After five blocks, I heard through
the din of my earbuds a voice from behind yelling “Coach!”
I turned to meet a young boy, breathless from running to
catch my attention.
Mame Diba introduced himself with a firm handshake and
unwavering eye contact. Mame is an eighth grader at P.S. 76
and a student athlete with Harlem Lacrosse and Leadership.
Over the course of our six block walk we discussed his love
for lacrosse, his favorite book (a novel about the Native
American interpretation of lacrosse as medicine), and
future plans to attend prep school and college on a lacrosse
scholarship.
Mame’s ambitions might seem commonplace in the
affluent communities that are the traditional hotbeds of
the game. As it turns out, they are commonplace among
his teammates at Harlem Lacrosse and Leadership (HLL),
too. HLL was born in 2008 at Frederick Douglass Academy
when Simon Cataldo, an overwhelmed young teacher, gave
his most challenging students lacrosse sticks. On a concrete
schoolyard amid the din of the city, the students bonded
with a game created by Native Americans in the verdant
wilderness of centuries past.
Playing a physical game on a concrete surface made the
students tough. Growing up in Harlem did, too. Cataldo
incentivized his students with lacrosse in exchange for good
behavior and regular studying. Unruly students focused.
Test scores rose. They traveled to universities for campus
tours, to prep schools for clinics, to the suburbs to test their
HARLEM LACROSSE LEVELS THE PLAYING FIELD
Transforming Lives Through Sport
mettle against teams with long-established programs
and endless resources. They built momentum and began
winning games against Fieldston, Allen Stevenson, and
Collegiate from the elite Ivy Preparatory League. These
were gritty wins, a result of discipline and hustle more
than of strategy or genetics. In the classroom, previously
uninterested students were arriving early, applying
themselves to academics, and becoming leaders. Wins on
the field of competition as well as in the classroom grew
their confidence, and their young teacher’s belief in their
potential created a link to opportunities beyond those
which Harlem could offer. It is here that the nexus between
sport and education became firmly established for these
student athletes.
Seven years later, Harlem Lacrosse and Leadership student-
athletes have received over ten million dollars in academic
scholarship offers. The first students are beginning to
matriculate into institutions such as West Point, University
of Virginia, Bates, Dickinson, Hobart, Haverford, and
Colby Colleges, among others. Still more are attending
prestigious prep schools in the northeast. Buzz Bissinger,
the author of Friday Night Lights and advocate for the
advancement of in-school sports programs, called HLL
“the single best school-based co-curricular program I have
ever seen.”1
The mentality among Mame and his teammates
is that lacrosse and academics are intertwined: opportunity
arises out of success in both. They now have a luxury that
did not exist before they began playing lacrosse; they now
have choice.
Choice is the result of innumerable decisions made by
parents and grandparents, hard work and consequence, and
in some cases, sheer luck. Those born without the luxury
of choice are subject to programs which determine their
circumstances, told where they will attend school, what
meals (if any) they will eat there, and what athletic and social
outlets are made available. Sports can serve as a vehicle out
of environments that lack the luxury of choice, especially
those generally reserved for the white upper class. One such
program in Philadelphia, Snider Hockey, couples ice hockey
with academics and life skills for underprivileged youth. A
proposal for a massive ice hockey complex at the Bronx
Armory is currently making its way through the ULURP
zoning approval process, interpreting the Snider model for
E S S A Y
BY CHARLES STEWART
3 | URBAN | Trans
7. styled bohemian and ethnic enclaves of re-gentrified
inner city core neighborhoods into pastiches of historicatl
ideas.2
Such places existed in opposition to the markers
of mediocrity such as the San Fernando Valley. But what
happens to periphery places on the margins of cultural
output in such an inversion? The 1960 US Census recorded
a San Fernando Valley that was over 90% white/anglo-
American. The 2010 US Census showed a Valley that
was profoundly different – over 40% foreign born and
a resultant cityscape that had experienced its own White
Flight, de-industrialization, and remaking by new groups
of people. It’s an inversion that is hard to notice, since
the packaging that is the cityscape is a potent maker of
perception.
Place is the intersection between space and time and the
Valley is now understood through a new contextualization.
The perception of the Valley as a culturally homogenous
place has begun to dissolve. Quietly but unapologetically,
artists like Robert Williams and C.R. Stecyk III – both
of whom established Juxtapoz Magazine and the Pop
Surrealist movement – are rising, along with Jeffrey
Vallance, whose conceptual works often point out the
absurdity of the contemporary art world. Filmmaker Tim
Burton hails from Burbank; Terry Gilliam, the only US-
born member of Monty Python, from Panorama City; Paul
Thomas Anderson from Studio City. All were inspired by
or succeeded in capturing the surreal quality of what is
otherwise considered largely unremarkable apart from its
mediocrity. The perception of creativity-inducing places
is altered as one tries to describe such a designated place.
The bypassing of traditional art venues and criticism of
the homogeneity of the contemporary commodified art
world is understood through regional iconography, the low
brow celebration of the underside of pop culture, playful
subversions, coy anger, vernacular materiality, ominous
irony, introverted self-mocking despair, and the realization
that there is “no longer a crucial place to participate in one’s
moment, because the place to be is everywhere.”3
Counterpoint to Elitism: A Typology
Urban planning theorist Robert Beauregard argues against
“Superlative Cities,” describing a sequence of reasoning
beginning with the idea that spaces for encounter lead
to the development of empathy, and a public that
is tolerant, open to engagement, “storytelling”, and
ultimately to discursive democracy.4
Beauregard uses the
term “epiphenomenal”, describing how mental events are
completely dependent on physical functions. With the term
“Critical Middling” we can begin to understand middle
spaces which make up the bulk of US Metropolitan areas.
These spaces naturally accompany the great equilibrium of
periphery and center in San Fernando Valley-like places.
Such transformation, transcendence and translocation are
the physical manifestations of the new structure of feeling
known as metamodernism.5
Mediocrity establishes high-
low contrast, and the ownership of it points out absurdities
and locates the fulcrum. We become, in this process, the
prisoners staging a theatrical criticism in the face of the
elite, the turning-over of culture about which the Marquis
de Sade, in his iteration in the film Quills, utters, “I merely
held up a mirror; perhaps he did not like what he saw!”
Appendix:
Typology as Assemblage of Creative Endeavors
●folk art
●non-monetary transactional spaces
●spontaneity, “Immediatism,” continuous co-creation,
continuous culture reconstitution colored by values lens
●political situatedness, artistic autonomy, transgression, historical
dialectic of critical disciplines, “running room”
●art modalities: speech, thought, and will; “social sculpture”
Examples of American art themes:
●Buckminster Fuller’s World Game (Arthur Ross Architecture
Gallery, Buell Hall, Columbia University): macro solutions to
world problems; pragmatism; utopianism
●conceptual curation into physical exhibition
●dry ironic statement art
●weavings and remixes of pan-ethnic art
●outsider art, visionary art
●the experimental impulse
Notes:
1. Foster, H. Design and crime (and other diatribes). (London: 2002).
2. Walters, D. The New California. (Sacramento: 1986).
3. Willick, D. Valley Vista: Art in the San Fernando Valley ca.1970-
1990. (Los Angeles: 2014)
4. Beauregard, R.A. “City of superlatives.” City & Community,
2(3), (2003). pp. 183-199 and Beauregard, Robert A. “Democracy,
storytelling, and the sustainable city.” in Eckstein, Barbara and
James A. Thogmorton, eds. Story and sustainability, (Cambridge,
MA: 2003). pp. 65-77.
5. Vermeulen, T and R. van den Akker. “Notes on
Metamodernism.” Journal of Aesthetics & Culture, 2, (2010).
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Vicente Arellano is a first year Urban Planning student from
Los Angeles. His interests include the cultural life of cities and
psychogeography.
Figure 2: Multi-ethnic mini-mall on Sherman Way in San Fernando Valley, 2011; photo by
the author
Trans | URBAN | 6
The Identity of Mediocrity and Mediocrity as Identity
Art scenes, slick spaces, expensive coffee, trendy
neighborhoods, and “starchitecture” have created an “in-
crowd” dynamic in which the purity of human creativity
is torn asunder by its own invented parameters. At the
metropolitan scale, this often produces regions and
populations that are aesthetically marginalized. Residents
of New York City, classify New Jersey as the second-class
citizen. In Los Angeles, this role is filled by the place in
which I was raised: the San Fernando Valley.
The late French postmodernist Jean Baudrillard remarked
that the emergence of societies at the periphery of the
global economic and cultural order has the effect of
depriving centralized historical societies of their mission.
He cautioned against the mimicry of the European
tendency to conceptualize reality. In his travels throughout
the United States in the 1980s, he believed he found
“America” when and where “Europe” disappeared from
sight. It was from this perspective that criticism was
directed at attempts to accumulate European art collections
and design sensibilities in the US. In a related approach, art
critic Hal Foster examined the ways in which the worlds of
contemporary art, architecture and design have developed
into “the inflated package that all but replaces the product.”1
It is vital that art be disentangled from Design, High
Brow Directors, Museum Ivory Towers, Agents, Markets,
and Marketing. A criticism of post-modernism is that it
elucidates our critiques and problems while being nearly
silent to solutions. (Indeed, what is a problem if there
is no “solution,” anyway?) We can reclaim the labels of
“mediocrity” against the New Jerseys and the San Fernando
Valleys of the world if only we agree that the possession of
art is compromised, that aesthetic judgement is wielded by
and should be wrested from the “in” crowd. Pure creativity
can be the check and balance to the economic manifestation
that is the US City. If everything gets appropriated by
Capitalism – including street art, resistance music, the
aesthetics of protest – then one must continuously create
and counter, even if this takes the form of an ownership of
the “virtual waste space,” drosscapes, and throwaway places
that the many of us live in or are born of.
THE TRANSLOCATION OF CRITICAL AESTHETICS
Transformation and Transcendence as Manifested in
the San Fernando Valley
The San Fernando Valley is separated from the iconic parts
of Los Angeles by the Santa Monica Mountains. Following
World War II it experienced rapid growth along suburban
planning aesthetics. The gee-whiz of science (DDT
and literal rocket science included), mass production,
and rationally planned cityscapes with separation of use
zones, single-occupancy automobile infrastructure and
common-denominator consumption had reached its salient
visibility in the Valley. Already a palimpsest of indigenous
human ecological pre-industrial non-civilized society,
Colonial Spanish Christian expansion, and early Anglo
rustic lifestyle aspirations, the Valley came to be by the
late 1950s and early 1960s the emblematic experience of
the “culture lifestyle” and a tangential built environment.
Beginning in the 1970s, however, it became less and less
desirable as newer suburbs sprouted up further away. The
purely functional design of housing tracts (small homes,
strip malls, wide boulevards, simple apartments) became
“mediocre” as functionality was compromised by wear and
tear, disinvestment, and disinterest. Already seen to be too
suburban, the Valley became despised when it did not meet
its intended functionality.
Today, the appropriation of subcultures, countercultures,
anti-establishments, art, and creativity has reduced the self-
E S S A Y
BY VICENTE ARELLANO
Figure 1: San Fernando Valley Aerial c.1960; public domain; retrieved from CSUN library
digital archives
5 | URBAN | Trans
8. processes began independently of Moses, their impact was
only felt when he used his authority to implement them
on the ground, uprooting hundreds of thousands of New
Yorkers and forever altering the face and the lifestyle of the
city. Is there villainy in this type of complicity?
While Caro’s tome has informed many opinions, a less well-
known revisionist book, Robert Moses and the Modern City:
The Transformation of New York, edited by Hilary Ballon
and Kenneth T. Jackson and published in 2007, should
also inform his work. Consistent and committed political
and administrative leadership has the potential to generate
innovative financing approaches to overcome the public
sector funding shortfall, navigate the time consuming
regulatory review process, and interact with special interest
groups. It may be that creativity and boldness has been
lost, or that, in the words of Paul Goldberger, “If power
was too centralized under Robert Moses, it is hard not to
wonder if we have not paid a price for letting the pendulum
swing so far the other way.”5
Since Moses lost power in 1968, New York City has not
built any new bridges, tunnels, highways, public housing
projects, performing arts centers or beaches.6
The
Metropolitan Transportation Authority, created in 1967 to
build more rail, has only constructed a few miles of track.7
Large transit projects are studied – and after the passage of
time, re-studied – but, without fail, little gets built: there is
no visionary to imagine how large projects may arise.
Images of Moses as the “visionary” primarily relate to his
work between the 1920s and 1940s as the man who built
great parks and parkways. Property–taking in these projects
primarily involved wealthy Long Islanders, and the fact that
moderate and middle-income residents of New York City
had access to these new beach and recreation areas was
viewed as a huge benefit. It was only after World War II -
when new housing and highway projects in their backyards
affected these same people in the City, when their rental
properties were taken and they were relocated - that things
turned negative. Another view is that the parkway-to-park
concept was actually pioneered just north of New York
Trans | URBAN | 8
Robert Moses shaped and influenced development in
New York City and the surrounding metropolitan area
more than any other individual during the 20th century.
Using the public authority mechanism and its strategy for
financial independence – run by boards of directors that
were small in number and isolated from the people, issuing
revenue bonds and charging the users with tolls rather than
relying on legislative funding or voter approved bonds –
became the conventional approach to building public
works. Democracy was put “on hold” as the passion for
greater efficiency led state officials and civic leaders, with
some antipathy toward local political leaders, to drop their
democratic guard and yield responsibility for an important
part of their destiny to an agency insulated from direct
popular control.1
This approach mercifully expedited and
yet dangerously circumvented public review.
Robert Moses’ career as a builder of major public works
began in 1924 when New York Governor Al Smith
appointed him Chairman of the State Council of Parks
and President of the Long Island State Parks Commission,
positions he held until 1963. In the process, he became
chairman of numerous park and parkway authorities. These
appointments enabled Moses to add approximately 40,000
acres of open space recreation through the creation of 14
Long Island state parks and eight parkways.
Moses’ second major set of appointments were given by
New York City Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia. Moses became
City Parks Commissioner in 1934, a post he held until
1963, and Chairman of the Triborough Bridge and Tunnel
Authority in 1936, which he held until 1968. His concurrent
positions on Long Island and New York City enabled him
to knit together a green carpet of open recreation space
and a network of parkways, highways, bridges, and tunnels
at a metropolitan, and thereby comprehensive, scale.
The third era of Moses’ public works occurred during his
appointment as New York City Construction Coordinator
from 1946-1963. With this position, he was responsible
for all federal money that was allocated to New York City.
By the 1960s, however, there was increased attention and
sensitivity to neighborhood planning, public participation,
civil rights, and historic and landmark preservation.
Community initiatives and environmental movements
ROBERT MOSES: VISIONARY OR VILLAIN?
conspired to create a very different landscape for
implementing large projects. Heightened caution, with
long studies and comprehensive review processes, stood in
the way of getting things built. Alan Altshuler and David
Luberoff, in their book Mega-Projects, characterize this
period from the mid 1970s to the present as an era of “do
not harm” because it became essential to fully mitigate or
altogether avoid any significant social disruption.2
In New
York, the City Charter was revised in the mid-1970s to
create 59 community planning boards which became part
of a review process that also involves borough boards, the
City Planning Commission, the City Council and even the
Mayor in some instances. This process, New York City’s
Uniform Land Use Review Procedure, still requires most
major projects to undergo 180 days of review and many
public hearings.3
Moses’ proposals for expressways through Manhattan and
another Long Island Sound bridge were all rejected. The
autocratic approach inherent in Moses’ authorities was out
style. He had built Le Corbusier’s City of Tomorrow, a city
of highways and towers in superblocks with massive open
spaces, but the city lamented the destruction of street life.
Indeed, Jane Jacobs, in The Death and Life of Great American
Cities, painted the street ballet as that most essential of
urban, and perhaps human, phenomena and gave voice to
the movement that railed against Moses’ perceived excesses.
Robert Caro’s 1974 classic biography, The Power Broker, only
fanned this fire, presenting a critical portrait of the man
that has become almost canon.
One can say in defense of Moses that he was held
accountable for implementing many post-World War II
federal programs and policies - related to housing, urban
renewal, and highways, condemning “the old” in the
interest of building “the new” - while ignoring the full
impact of demolition and relocation. It was not Moses,
certainly, who chose the automobile as the preferred
mode of transportation in the 20th century, or passed the
Federal Housing Act or the Federal Highway Construction
Act that allocated billions of dollars for suburbanization,
or who decided that highways should be placed along
waterfronts, or who decreed that public housing should
be sited according to neighborhood racial patterns, or who
mandated millions for slum clearance.4
Yet while these
E S S A Y
BY DR. FLOYD LAPP, FAICP
7 | URBAN | Trans
9. BRIDGES OF NEW YORK
P H O T O E S S A Y
Trans | URBAN | 10
City in Westchester County with the building of the Bronx
River Parkway (1907-1925) and its related county parks
years before Moses started his work on Long Island.
The parkway-to-park concept can, in fact, be traced back
to the 19th century and the work of landscape architect
Frederick Law Olmsted. Furthermore, one could claim
that the metropolitan open recreation space and vehicular
transportation networks were originally illustrated in
the Regional Plan Association’s Plan for New York and
Environs in 1929 and that Moses simply implemented these
ideas. Even so, it was Moses who turned these illustrations
into realities.
Most of the images of Moses as the “villain” relate to his
use of federal housing and highway funds after World War
II and the destruction of neighborhood fabrics that never
quite got knitted together again cannot escape our urban
consciousness even today. From 1949-1959, for example,
the Title 1 Urban Renewal Program caused the relocation
of approximately 100,000 low-income residents in New
York City.8
There were, however, many other accomplices
in this process long before Moses’ projects were being
implemented. At the turn of the 20th century, the great
East River bridges, new parks and construction of a great
number of schools forced the relocation of 50,000 people.
The building of the subway system and street improvements
continued this trend. Moses, in this reading, was simply
following the trajectory set by a long course of federally
funded urban development.
During a 44-year career as extensive and varied as his,
Robert Moses was clearly at times both a visionary and a
villain. Take all the hats Moses wore, put them on the many
people who have tried them on since his demise, factor in
an elaborate land use and environmental review process,
neighborhood groups, union mentalities, and legal actions,
and compare the record.
How, then, should Robert Moses be remembered? On
this, you be the jury: In a sea of unceasing change, is he
a visionary to be celebrated, recalled fondly as we make
use of the great public works he pursued? Or should we
castigate him as the villain who left us to inherit the unrest
and inequities he created?
Notes:
1. Doig, Jameson W. Empire on the Hudson: Entrepreneurial Vision
and Political Power at the Port Authority. (New York: 2001) pp. 2-3.
2. Altshuler, Alan and David Luberoff. Mega-Projects. (Washington,
DC: 2003), pp. 8, 27-44.
3. Garvin, Alexander. “The Second Coming of Moses.” Topic.
(March 2003). The more cautious approach is discussed in
Altschuler Luberoff. Mega-Projects.
4. “Rethinking Robert Moses: What If New York’s Notorious
Master Builder Wasn’t Such A Bad Guy After All?” Metropolis.
(August-September, 2002).
5. The New York Times, December 18, 1988, p. 45.
6. Jackson, Kenneth T. “Robert Moses and the Planned
Environment: A Re-evaluation.” in Krieg, Joann P., ed. Robert
Moses: Single Minded Genius (Interlaken: Heart of the Lakes, 1989).
pp. 21-30.
7. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority. Capital Needs
Assessment: 2000-2019. p. 5.
8. Schwartz, Joel. The New York Approach: Robert Moses, Urban
Liberals and Redevelopment of the Inner City (Columbus: 1993). pp.
xv, 1-24.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Floyd Lapp, AICP, is an Adjunct Professor of Urban Planning
at GSAPP. He has more than 50 years of urban planning,
development, and transportation experience. His current research
interests include congestion pricing, bus rapid transit, transit oriented
development, sustainable development as an on call urban planning
and transportation consultant.
9 | URBAN | Trans
10. Trans | URBAN | 12
Studiesof (Un)FamiliarTransience
This photographic series attempts to document, through the lens of an urban planner, the bridges that facilitate the daily, commensurate transience across the lines that
divide our map but which remain unrecognized and unfamiliar to native and non-native New Yorkers alike. Eschewing the iconism of the Brooklyn, Manhattan,
or Williamsburg Bridges, these traverses loom far above the urban – above where we live – and span New York’s serene and bustling waterways, spanning the
geographical boundaries of what we conceive as five boroughs. Carrying transit, automobiles, people, and the material goods that define our everyday activities, these
feats of infrastructure are vital for engendering and reflecting the capitalist modes of production in New York City. Reading Beauregard and working my way through
Sandercock’s evocative, provocative Voices from the Borderlands: A Meditation on Metaphor, I journeyed through New York City’s complex, extensive
subterranean transit system. Once above ground, I transplanted myself and reveled in the diverse, discourses of the neighborhood, the intriguing clashes of land uses,
the experiential nature and knowledge I accrued. Various transgressions (hopping fences, timorously crossing ‘empty’ expressways, working my way around these
industrial behemoths) allowed me to, hopefully, give the viewer the first person point of view I beheld over the course of several months. In presenting this study of (un)
familiar transience, I hope that those perusing these photographs become, like me, mesmerized by the sheer enormity, breathtaking views, and immense complexity that
accompany these often unrecognized spans of steel and stone in New York City’s sublime, convoluted, labyrinthine landscapes.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
C.D. Giamarino is a first-year Urban Planning student from Orange County, CA. His interests include social and environmental justice and equality
for marginalized communities, particularly through the lenses of critical urban theory and (post)modern planning theories.
(words and photos)
BY C.D. GIAMARINO
11 | URBAN | Trans
13. He chuckles. “You’re not the first person to suggest that,”
he says, “but it just creates a need for greater emphasis on
building shared consensus. The challenge is to agree on the
objectives in light of what’s possible and the role of the
planner is to facilitate those discussions.”
“Planning is about helping bring about change. In practice,
this means filtering national and international policy
objectives to the local level, to the point at which they have
a direct impact upon each of our lives. I think there are two
important points which this needs us to recognize. Firstly,
that planning is a fundamentally political activity, and
secondly that this makes stakeholder engagement essential
to securing changes that are both lasting and positive. I’m
firmly of the opinion, therefore, that the key to good urban
planning is twofold: evidence and empathy.”
It’s a message which translates across countries and systems,
and it’s easy to see why, when he speaks, people listen. Yet,
while Manns’ influence is increasingly felt overseas, he
recognizes that it’s easier to make a difference locally. For
him, this means London. “The British really established
urban planning as a discipline but have increasingly looked
overseas for examples. There’s a generation who seem
ready to grasp the mantle, and it’s great to be part of that,
but it’s often helpful to remember the mantra that ‘change
begins at home.’” It’s an interesting thought from someone
who seems to have been everywhere.
Despite his globetrotting, these aren’t mere words for
Manns. His actions speak loudly about where he locates
true change. Along with such luminaries as the architects
Lord Richard Rogers and Sir Terry Farrell, he was part of
a small group of globally resonant design professionals
who helped save the London Society from disbandment
following its centenary in 2012. “In an age of increasing
civic identity, the Society emerged as a pioneer of urban
planning in London. Its early ideas, such as the green
belt and metropolitan regions, have since influenced the
way cities around the world perceive themselves and their
growth. It would have been disastrous to wind up an
impartial forum for debate at a time like this.” He thinks
for a moment, then suggests, “In many ways it’s never been
more valuable.”
“It took a huge commitment from everybody involved,
but in many ways the real challenge began with after the
Society’s re-launch in September 2014,” he says. Since that
point the London Society has begun replicating a model
similar to the Municipal Art Society in New York, growing
its membership and wielding increasing political weight.
It has already issued two white papers. Manns authored
the first, provocatively entitled Green Sprawl: Our Current
Affection for a Preservation Myth?, attracting significant media
coverage and prompting an immediate update of the UK’s
Government guidance to Members of Parliament, set out
in their Green Belt Standard Notes and Research Briefings.
“Green Sprawl looks at the origins and intents of London’s
green belt. It’s intended to provide a factual basis from
which to open discussion. The green belt is an emotive
and contentious issue, but so are the social and economic
consequences of failing to confront the challenges of
London’s continued growth and success. At the heart of
the whole debate, ultimately, is a fairly simple question:
what kind of city and environment do we want to create?”
Manns’ varied preoccupations seem defined by such public
andpoliticalquestions.“Mostof myfreetimeatthemoment
is spent securing support for an All Party Parliamentary
Group for London’s Planning and Built Environment.
There isn’t currently a forum for impartial cross-party
discussion amongst politicians about the key issues facing
the Capitol. We’re close to a breakthrough though: there’s
support from both Houses of Parliament and in addition
to other civic groups. There’s a real opportunity for us to
give representatives of our city a coherent voice.”
His tone is relaxed but carries a sense of immediacy
that’s hard to pin down. Flitting from the international
to the local level, effortlessly linking the two, a sense of
coordinated vision emerges from what might otherwise
appear unconnected and disparate efforts. He laughs when
I suggest his personal style and impact is like a surgeon
for cities. “I love analogies,” he says. “Surgeons repair,
doctors diagnose, teachers educate, politicians represent
and academics study. The reality is that our citizenship gives
us each the right and responsibility to be all of these when
it comes to our cities and communities.”
“Good planning is about unlocking the potential of both
properties and the communities in which they’re located,”
Manns continues. “Imagine what could be achieved if
more people could find their voice.” His efforts, extensive
and sustained, local and international, are helping achieve
precisely this. What’s more, defined by an infectious
enthusiasm and immediacy, they’re making a difference.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Lori Kahale is an independent researcher and journalist, with a
background in urban planning. Working and travelling globally, she
has a particular interest in cities and innovation.
Trans | URBAN | 18
The media is awash with creative personalities who, from architects to
celebrity chefs, provide us with easily-digestible forms of originality and
innovation. Cities, however, like the ideas that shape them, are more
amorphous. The result is that urban planners, too often the illusive
puppet-masters of growth, blur into the background. One exception
is Jonathan Manns, a British town planner whose influence is shifting
debate with an impact both in Europe and beyond. Lori Kahale
caught up with him in London.
...............................................
It’s a bright summer morning when I meet Jonathan
Manns, at once charming and charismatic, in a café close
to his office in London’s affluent district of Marylebone.
A confident handshake accompanies his well-cut navy
blue suit: an unmistakably British appearance conveying
a definitive commercial sensibility. Our discussion begins
quickly, with Manns waxing articulately about everything
from literature to politics to the state of our cities.
Manns works as Director of Planning for the global real
estate services firm Colliers International, advising public
and private sector clients on development strategies and
keeping an eye out for opportunities. Just thirty years
old, he has already built an enviable track record, having
led proposals across the United Kingdom, particularly in
London, for everything from tall buildings and new town
centers to regeneration programs for urban and rural estates.
Sunday morning readers across the British Isles might
know the name from bylines in the Guardian or the Sunday
Times or a collection he recently edited, Kaleidoscope City:
Reflections on Planning & London.
Outside of Britain, however, Manns is best known for what
business leaders typically refer to as thought leadership.
In practice, this is about shaping professional and public
debates. It’s seen him challenge global “best practice”
assumptions on emotive and politically sensitive planning
issues from park-and-ride to green belts. He seems
perpetually busy. Last year, he chaired a Working Group
reporting to the European Union, and he is currently
coordinating a workshop for young planners from across
the continent. His resume boasts impressive feats for
somebody who comes across as characteristically and,
some might say unnecessarily, modest.
RENDEZVOUS WITH JONATHAN MANNS
His interests in planning developed fully in China where,
in 2006, he began working with the British Council in
Nanjing. “It was a fascinating time,” recalls Manns. “The
Government was focused on making the emerging market
system work more effectively and supporting growth.
Sustainable development was high on the agenda and the
Shanghai Industrial Investment Company was actively
seeking to deliver the world’s first eco-city at Dongtan”.
Dongtan still hasn’t happened, but the publicity
surrounding its genesis sparked an interest in sustainable
development that has since come to define Manns’ work,
centered in London since 2008. “My consultancy is here in
Britain but I like to travel whenever possible. I’ve recently
spoken with people from China to Chile. Everybody is
grappling with similar issues. Changing perceptions means
building bridges and sharing experiences.” Having already
spent time in Paris, Lisbon, and Brussels, he’ll head later
this year to Dublin, Sydney, and New York. While we’re
speaking, he receives an e-mail from Deltametropolis
Association, a think tank for metropolitan development in
the Netherlands. “We’ve been discussing the relationship
between landscape and economic competitiveness,” he says
casually before returning the phone to his pocket.
For a man whose life appears overfilled with planning,
Manns appears comfortable and unperturbed. “When
you cut back the jargon, it’s an activity which most people
can engage with enthusiastically. It’s all about shaping the
future.” Perhaps anticipating skepticism, he continues, “I
see how that can raise some daunting questions but, as [the
American] Wes Jackson often says, ‘if your life’s work can
be accomplished in your lifetime, you’re not thinking big
enough.’” He pauses. “I know this will sound clichéd, but I
got into this job to change the world. That’s precisely what
planning does and why I do it.”
From an outsider’s perspective, the British system in which
he works is more adversarial than that in America. They
don’t zone land, for example, but expect applicants for
building permission to make the case in support of their
plans, whilst others can make a case to the contrary, with
the decision often taken by local politicians. I wonder out
loud whether this creates tension between stakeholders and
the clients that consultants like Manns represent.
I N T E R V I E W
BY LORI KAHALE
17 | URBAN | Trans
14. Notes:
1. Doan, Petra L., ed. Queerying Planning: Challenging heteronormative
assumptions and reframing planning practice. (Burlington, VT: 2011).
2. Ibid.
3. Irazábal, Clara & Claudia Huerta. “Intersectionality and
planning at the margins: LGBTQ youth of color in New York.”
Gender, Place & Culture: A Journal of Feminist Geography. (2015)
4. Ibid.
5. Doan. Queerying planning.
6. Irazábal & Huerta. “Intersectionality and planning.”
7. Forsyth, Ann. “Queerying Planning Practice: Understanding
Non-Conformist Populations.” in Doan, Petra L., ed. Queerying
Planning: Challenging heteronormative assumptions and reframing
planning practice. (Burlington, VT: 2011)
8. Forsyth. “Queerying Planning Practice.”
9. Doan. Queerying Planning.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Abdulla Al Shehhi is a second year urban planning student. His
interests include urban and economic development, and the mobility of
sexual minorities. He is currently writing a thesis on the identification
of LGBT enclaves in New York City and assessing their segregation
versus their assimilation.
Trans | URBAN | 20
area anymore. Increased popularity of the neighborhood
may have also brought forth some aspects of gentrification
including increased property prices.
Such unintended consequences are not uncommon. In the
late 1990s, the Giuliani administration in New York City
used zoning laws to combat ‘adult’ themed businesses.
In practice, the regulation was largely used to target gay
establishments and, as such, can be construed as a direct
attack by planning on the LGBT community. In other cases,
the failure of preservationists and planners to account for
buildings and spaces with historic or monumental value to
the LGBT communities has lead some neighborhoods to
disappear.9
The challenges facing planners today with regard to
LGBT neighborhoods are somewhat ameliorated by the
recent advances in United States federal law, especially the
Supreme Court ruling in favor of equal marriage rights.
We can expect this decision to have visible effects on the
nature of LGBT neighborhoods and to begin to break
down entrenched heteronormativity – the presumption
of a uniformly heterosexual population – when planning
for residential and mixed-use neighborhoods. Whether
the court ruling will increase the likelihood of same-sex
couples to live in single-family units is as yet unanswerable,
but planners should account for this possibility.
The planning profession and the LGBT community
have for too long turned away from one another, with a
lack of understanding and discrimination on one side an
dearth of participation, forced or otherwise, on the other.
The education of planning students on LGBT issues and
the development of literature discussing LGBT issues in
planning are two ways in which some of the very present
challenges in planning for LGBTs can be overcome.
Projects designed to foster a higher sense of community
and inclusion of LGBTs should be promoted by planners.
This is achievable by deliberate outreach to LGBTs and
advocacy groups, inviting them into the active planning
process. Fast paced, quick-win projects can act as stepping
stones to encourage LGBTs to get involved in the planning
process and give planners the necessary experience to be
able to plan for LGBT communities and neighborhoods
and stand for those who need us. Finally, planners should
understand that a person’s membership in the LGBT
community does not negate marginalization on the basis
of gender, ethnicity, or income. On the contrary, it only
entrenches them more firmly within the viewfinder of
urban planning.
The history of urban planning is riddled with instances in
which lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transsexuals (LGBTs)
were the subject of prejudice and marginalization, both
individually and collectively. This came to striking light in the
aftermath of the 1999 formation of the Gays and Lesbians
in Planning Division (GALIP) of the American Planning
Association (APA), when the APA’s Planning Magazine was
riddled with letters to the editor objecting to the formation
of the division. Objections ranged from accusing the APA
of pandering, to sexual deviance, to claiming that planning
is a technical field and that therefore the inclusion of
GALIP – as well as other marginalized groups, such as
African Americans and women – is illegitimate.1
The current literature does not suggest that LGBT
communities in the United States face direct discrimination
by planners. It has, instead, been generally a case of
ignorance and neglect. LGBT people in urban settings have
complicated needs that are often ignored or misunderstood
by planners, with residents often seeking a tight-knit
sense of community while simultaneously desiring some
sense of differentiation and protection from surrounding
neighborhoods. Prominently LGBT neighborhoods, such
as gay villages, are often neglected altogether, left to battle
variously gentrification or decay by themselves with little
to no advocacy and help from planners. Rising property
values in San Francisco’s Castro District, for example, have
effectively displaced the LGBT community there.2
Large cities are often refuges for LGBT youth who feel
unwelcome in less tolerant smaller cities. The measure
of anonymity and the presence of communities that do
not conform to sexual and gender norms has continually
reinforced this notion, making these larger cities more
attractive.3
Planners do not always acknowledge this role, let
alone plan for it: shockingly, up to 40% of homeless youth
in New York City are LGBT.4
This should be seen as an
abject failure on the part of the urban planning profession
to stand up for a particularly marginalized community.
Planning also often fails to account for the gender, ethnic,
and sexual variations within the LGBT community and the
resulting patterns of spatial variation and discrimination.
Queer places today frequently fail to accommodate
members of sexual minorities within the LGBT community,
(TRANS)FORMING PLANNING
The Inclusion and Seclusion of LGBT Individuals in Contemporary Planning Theory and Practice
E S S A Y
BY ABDULLA AL SHEHHI
19 | URBAN | Trans
such as bisexuals, transsexuals, and other non-conformists.5
In the West Village in New York City, for example, gay
men of color reported being regularly often ostracized
on Christopher Street – the site of the 1969 Stonewall
Riots, interestingly ignited by minority members of the
LGBT community – by rude glances from white gay men
or the refusal of the bars in the area to sell specific kinds
of liquor (such as Hennessey) or play specific genres of
music (such as rap).6
This spatial variation is also seen in
the neighborhoods where different members of the LGBT
community choose to live: some lesbians, more likely than
gay men to have custody of a child, are prone to live in
neighborhoods with close proximity to schools and lower
rents, reflecting their central focus on their families.
On another note, many stereotypes about the LGBT
community persist, including the belief that its members,
especially gay men, live in affluent neighborhoods and have
high disposable income. The case of the South of Market
and Tenderloin areas of San Francisco are enough to
disabuse us of this notion: many gay men were only able to
afford to live in these areas due to their willingness to make
financial sacrifices and share housing in order to continue
living in a safe and secure neighborhood within the greater
context of a gay community.7
Further challenging planners’
spatial conception of LGBT communities is the fact that
there is no single LGBT identity: individuals of varying
genders and sexual orientations may express a wish to have
a sense of collective community and yet, in practice, prefer
to live separately.8
It can be difficult for planners to understand and attend
to the quickly evolving needs of the LGBT community:
the fluidity of sexuality often translates into a shifting
identity of space. Planners find it hard to account for the
fast-paced, transient nature of many LGBT populations
and their associated immediate needs, especially given
how slowly bureaucracy-laden planning processes tend to
move. The failure of planners to understand LGBTs and
their fluid needs may cause well-intentioned urban policies
to cause more harm than good to LGBT neighborhoods.
Manchester’s gay village around Canal Street, for example,
was promoted as a popular tourist destination in the 1990s.
The sudden influx of heterosexual tourists caused an
exodus of LGBT individuals who didn’t feel safe in the
15. wants to benefit from the Prêt à Taux Zéro, for instance,
the fact that they can only do so in small rural municipalities
hardly reflects current trends of settlement: as potential
homeowners move increasingly to larger, burgeoning
metropolitan markets, the Prêt’s focus on more peripheral
markets may hinder its positive effects.
From national political order to locally flexible
interventions?
This year, Minister of Housing Sylvia Pinel set off for a
publicized tour of the regions affected by these housing
goals in an effort to mobilize all stakeholders involved. From
the constrained North to booming Côte d’Azur, where
housing authorities are going beyond sectorized housing
incentives by praising potential mixed-income buyers and
renters, a total of eight regions have become solid stops
in this Tour de France of Construction: Alsace, Aquitaine,
Bretagne, Languedoc-Roussillon, Midi-Pyrénées, Nord-
Pas-de-Calais, Provence-Alps- Côte d’Azur, and Pays de la
Loire. Pinel’s circuit was not only an official review of a state
project: at the same time, the trip publically represented
an engagement with the local unusual in historical French
housing initiatives.
The Tour de France can, in this light, potentially be viewed
in terms of its transformative elements, as one housing
approachmakingspaceforanother.Thismaytakeongreater
significance in France given recent and not-so-recent social
problems in some of the older government-built housing
projects, exemplified most prominently by the unrest in
Paris’ northeastern banlieues. Such a transformation may
best be described by a quote from geographer Kevin Cox’s
seminar given at the École Normale Supérieure de Lyon
regarding the neoliberal shift in the production of cities
and its strong links with the economic crisis:
By reflecting on this shift towards entrepreneurialism, there
is a lingering wonder whether the shift in the nature of
housing transactions relates to the adoption of the Tour
de France of Construction. How does a more bottom-up
approach to housing, when achieved through the use of
“very traditional” tools, alter the way housing is conceived
and perceived? Is there not some amount of tension at
play between two seemingly opposing approaches, one that
authorizes the center to make all decisions and one that
privileges, or at least respects, local ideas and practices?
The Transatlantic Divide revisited?
After the economic crisis in 2008, and historically low levels
of new housing units in 2014, legislators perceived the
need for change.6
Not only did they call for the power of
branding – the Tour de France belongs to a sporting event
that does not need any elucidation – but they also tried to
inject innovation in the methods applied.
Therefore, the French model for housing construction
needs to be redefined in the light of three trends: the
economic crisis of 2008, the rise of new actors of urban
governance, and, finally, the evermore complex local
balance of public and private, top-down and bottom-up.
The Ministry has clearly opted for a distancing from the
top-down policies of the past, but the question remains of
whether this new set of policies can embody a definitive
shift from interventionism to voluntarism. At any rate, the
contemporary approach represents some sort of blurring
of classic categories and models in the French housing
approach.
It is too early, of course, to attempt a final analysis. This
process is awaiting 2016’s new law on “Equality and
Citizenship” which will work to embrace the government’s
positioning on concentration and de-concentration of
social housing. Once this geography is fully outlined, it will
be possible to better understand - and critique - the social
dimension of the Tour de France of Construction.
Notes:
1. The two most important types of incentives are: (1) tax-
break for affordable housing developers in the construction or
rehabilitation phase; (2) tax-break for households with modest
income who wish to become homeowners.
2. The Politique de la Ville was voted in 1995 as a set of legislative
and planning measures designed to enhance a specific set of
neighborhoods defined as “constrained”, in order to reduce
social and territorial inequality.
3. The Prêt à Taux Zéro, created in 1995, is a government-funded
loan option without interests, that helps households in their first
home acquisition. It used to target only new housing units, but
since 2015 it also includes the old housing stock.
4. Roudil, Nadine, Florence Bouillon, Agnès Deboulet, Pascale
Dietrich-Ragon, and Yankel Fijalkow. “Les vulnérabilités
résidentielles en questions.” Métropolitiques. (June 17, 2015.)
5. Professor Emeritus at the Ohio State University (Department
of Geography): Cox, Kevin R. “How and Why American and
European Cities are Different.” Talk at the École Normale
Supérieure de Lyon, Séminaire Villes Territoires Mondialisations.
(November 26, 2010.)
6. Only 312,000 units were constructed annually.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Magda is a Fellow (Normalienne) at the École Normale Supérieure
de Lyon. Her research interests focus on debates related to spatial
justice and the suburbanization of poverty. She studied Geography
and Urban Planning at the École Normale Supérieure and completed
her Masters at UC Berkeley. She has previously worked with SPUR
San Francisco as well as France, Algeria, Senegal and Costa Rica.
[David Harvey] points to a shift in the policies of
urban governments since the ‘sixties from what
he calls urban managerialism to ones of urban
entrepreneurialism. Urban managerialist policies were
ones with redistributional intent like public housing
and subsidized mass transit. This emphasis has now
shifted towards policies aimed at stimulating the
growth of urban economies. (...) The implication is
that this change has occurred on both sides of the
Atlantic.5
Trans | URBAN | 22
Nearly150yearsafterHaussmannandhalf acenturybeyond
Le Corbusier, France may once again be at the vanguard of
urban planning. Just as France’s master planner and its most
infamous, if not illustrious, architect reimagined the visage
and concept of housing structures in several cities across
the territory in the 19th and 20th centuries, a recent housing
construction initiative once again aims to encourage the
country to implement a new trend in housing. Drawing
inspiration from the world-renowned cycling race, the
Tour de France of Construction is a public branding of
national tools developed under the impulse of the Ministry
of Housing to help curb France’s current housing crisis
in eight regional hotspots. The attempt materializes by
offering incentives to housing providers, be they developers
of market-rate, social, or mixed-income accommodation.
Government-funded centralized incentives epitomize
the French approach to facilitating new construction. In
2014, government deployed an abrupt methodological
transition from a top-down approach to a bottom-up
system coupled with public private partnerships at both
the local and regional levels. These incentives function as
an innovative approach in handling housing issues at the
national level.1
The approach reveals a stark difference
in how France has dealt with its housing sector following
the Second World War, a period marked by legislation
prescribing rigid restrictions and deterring participation by
local municipalities. This brief reflection on current French
housing construction landscapes and its transitions paves
the path for an exploration of the actions housing decision
makers are taking locally, recognizing simultaneously that
there is still progress to be made.
The sharp speculative rise of real estate prices, the increase
in residential segregation, and the subprime mortgage
crisis that emanated from the United States to Europe in
2008 reveal the shared vicissitudes that western markets
have been facing since the 1990s. French tools for housing
resilience – characterized best by a shift in the scope of
tools – borrow more from tradition than previously
thought, leading to questions on the appropriateness of the
classic French housing model definition.
A not so new initiative : A tradition à la française
The rhetoric of this housing incentive tool is not
revolutionary. Targeting a total of 1300 neighborhoods
of the Politique de la Ville, the Ministry of Housing still
refers to it as a “Grand Chantier” or Major Works, which
HOUSING TRANSITIONS
The Tour de France of Construction
is consistent with the scale of national rebuilding projects
in post-Second World War Europe.2
Indeed, the post-crisis
finance system has often been, to a large degree, structured
by the national government.
The Tour de France of Construction focuses on five
priorities, all of which are pulled from the classic portfolio
of annual housing agendas: increasing homeownership,
simplifying house construction rules, encouraging mixed-
income units, softening land use standards, and renovating
the old housing stock. As new expansions – such as large
new construction projects and access to credit to increase
homeownership – are welcomed, it is difficult not to invoke
the classic French model of state intervention in planning,
administration and finance systems.
While a few of the tools developed introduce innovations,
the majority refer to a long familiar policy discourse.
Therefore, tools can range from the social housing supply
(classic) to the reuse of public land for construction to the
revitalization of small downtowns. The innovations also
include the Prêt à Taux Zéro Rural, the eco-district labeling,
and lastly the imposition of the Loi sur la Solidarité et le
Renouvellement Urbains, a policy equivalent to inclusionary
zoning.3
This last law flags regions which usually coincide
with “hot” – and, therefore, not inclusionary – real estate
markets, such as Aquitaine, with 75 municipalities, or
Languedoc-Roussillon with 89 municipalities. Both regions
are located in the South of France, where it has traditionally
been difficult to generate grassroots approval of anything
inclusionary.
The Loi strikes a familiar chord. It is not classified as an
incentive, but rather calls for the classic leverages that
the public sector has utilized since the end of the Second
World War, namely punishment through policy. Within this
mindset we find a striking paradox, an oscillation between
repression and assistance evidenced by the delicate balance
between policy that stimulates and policy that forbids.4
In
addition, the policy approach recalls French interventionism
in four distinct domains: localization, project management,
physical construction and financing. An old saying, “Quand
lebâtimentva,toutva”(“Whenthebuildinggoes,everything
goes”) shows the strong belief that state intervention in
housing supply is seen as particularly positive on investment
in real estate construction.
Thus far, opponents argue that some of the tools employed
are too disconnected from reality. If a young household
E S S A Y
BY MAGDA MAAOUI
21 | URBAN | Trans
16. cultural tensions, then, is not new but only brought
further into focus by the recent changes. It might be
more productive, then, to frame the narrative of recent
transformations in terms of the ongoing struggle of a
suburban public to resolve internal tensions, rather than
simply as the creation of one enclave within another.
This possibility, for the creation of a diverse suburban
public, is to me, the most exciting thing about this exhibit. It
shows in concrete terms how American suburbs, infamous
for their exclusivity, are increasingly becoming contested
spaces and sites of real potential for the formation of
inclusive and heterogeneous publics. For planners, it’s
important to note that these transformations are occurring
independently of efforts to either maintain a legislated
exclusivity or to attract specific groups to their jurisdictions.
A story like Montville’s casts legitimate doubt on the
benefit and effectiveness of suburban planning as it’s been
conceived in the past. At the same time, it’s clear that more
quality first-hand research (exactly what Mr. Fan is doing)
could go a long way toward the success of any future
efforts. SubUrbanisms asks us to reconsider our conceptions
of “urban” and “suburb.” In fact, through its depictions of
both history and possibility, it forces this question upon us.
It also ponders, at this crucial juncture in the idea of the
legitimacy of belonging, a new vision of an American ideal.
Notes:
1. “Making of Chinatown: exhibit focuses on shift following
casino openings”. Hartford Courant. Susan Dunne 3/26/14
http://articles.courant.com/2014-03-25/entertainment/hc-
montville-chinatown-0323-20140325_1_demographic-shift-
montville-norwich-bulletin
2. Nextcity.org “There’s an urban experiment happening in
suburban Connecticut”. Oscar Perry Abello
https://nextcity.org/daily/entry/chinese-immigrants-casinos-
from-cities-to-suburbs-museum-exhibit
SubUrbanisms: Casino Urbanization, Chinatowns, and the
Contested American Landscape is on display until Mar. 27,
2016, at the Museum of Chinese in America, 215 Centre St., New
York, NY. A book of the same name, edited by Stephen Fan, is now
available for purchase.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Carsten Rodin studies Urban Planning and Architecture at GSAPP.
He is interested in demographic change in North American suburbs
(particularly immigration and aging) and its implications for housing
design, ranging from the adaptation to the creation of new models.
Trans | URBAN | 24
A quiet residential street in the quiet American enclosure
called “suburbs.” Trees, lawns, driveways, garages. Ranch
house after ranch house, out-of-place colonial. Peaceful,
but also maybe a little too uniform. Lacking in life. Where
is everyone?
All at once, the driveways are torn up and planted with
vegetable gardens. Drying racks for laundry and fish (fish!)
are erected on front lawns. At all hours, the street rustles
with a slow but steady flow of people, one or two at a time,
coming and going on foot and bicycle. Every so often, small
groups form around mailboxes at the roadside, speaking to
each other not in English, but in Chinese.
SubUrbanisms, a new exhibit at the Museum of Chinese in
America curated by architect and educator Stephen Fan,
tells this story: how Montville, Connecticut became home
to a wave of immigrant Chinese casino workers, and the
radical transformation they brought to the neighborhood.
Fan outlines the scenario behind the migration, recounts
the back-stories of individual migrants, details how single-
family homes were converted for multiple occupancy,
maps local walking paths and regional relationships,
and acknowledges prejudices from neighbors and local
governments. As a documentary project, it’s extremely
successful. Indeed, the Montville presented highlights
the division between the Sub and the Urban, standing as
something decidedly out of the realm of “city” but which,
nevertheless, departs significanlty from the single-family
ideal, kitchen outfitted with a General Electric dishwasher,
tail-finned Chrysler in the driveway.
Here, we see practical meditations on the feasibility of
American life (survival tactics?), an implantation of Asian
urban norms in an otherwise carefully staged space. At
the same time, this first part of the exhibit illustrates
a conceptualization of the urban condition as a socio-
behavioral phenomenon, something having to do less with
physicality and more to do with the particular way people
exercise agency in response to the people and things around
them. A particular human heterogeneity defines here the
flourishing urbanization of a thoroughly unexpected
Connecticut suburb.
STEPHEN FAN
Suburbanisms: Casino Urbanization, Chinatowns, and the Contested American Landscape at the
Museum of Chinese in America
As it moves toward interpretation and speculation, however,
the exhibit loses some of its appeal. First, different parts
of the exhibit appear to be based on contradictory and
even competing visions of urbanization. In the case study
research, urban change seems to be seen as something
incremental, defined less by structural changes in the built
environment than by the social and political dynamics
between the lives of inhabitants. All it takes for the suburb
to become more like the city is an injection of new attitudes
about how space could be used. Oddly, the architectural
proposals portray the opposite vision: urbanization defined
as total physical transformation.
Glossy renderings show a suburb rebuilt as megastructure,
complete with high-rise housing, rapid transit and formal
public space but without a trace of the user-initiated
interventions that animate the case studies. If the first
section suggested the “urban” as a human approach, as
an attitude, the second seems to treat it as little more than
a physically recognizable form. This is due, perhaps, to
the tension between collective and individual authorship:
while the Montville that exists and is depicted expresses
the dynamic and contested growth of a group space,
the speculative section falls somewhat flat because of its
reliance upon one individual’s attempt to single-handedly
replicate the collective experience. Without explicitly
questioning the effect of the architectural intervention
on an organically transgressive space, SubUrbanisms seems
to neglect an important point of inquiry into the urban/
suburban question.
Demographic change is presented as an all-or-nothing
proposition, too. The exhibit creates a narrative of a
formerlyall-whitesuburb,emptiedoutandrepopulatedwith
Chinese immigrants. Of course, this isn’t exactly accurate.
As a reporter covering an earlier version of the exhibit
pointed out, Montville has approximately 20,000 residents;
in the last decade, the number of Chinese residents has
increased from around 100 to 1,000.1
The shift, therefore,
is visible and meaningful, but far from comprehensive.
In another review, Fan himself (who grew up in Montville)
talks about tension with neighbors when his parents
planted a vegetable garden in their own yard, years before
the recent influx of immigrants.2
The presence of cross-
R E V I E W
BY CARSTEN RODIN
23 | URBAN | Trans
17. chronicling rampant gang violence and massive police
action with a history of Revolutionary America and the
birth of 125th Street as an industrial anchor. The complexity
is impressive, as is Walters’ clarity in intertwining all of
these seemingly disparate elements. “Lonely in America,”
the introductory essay is, if less multifarious, a similarly
satisfying read, with its careful disclosures seen in part, half-
buried, surrounded by other ideas (just like the eight slave
coffins that frame the story).
We, as readers, also benefit greatly from Walters’ reporting
and perception of such things as black life after the election
of Obama, the intellectual legacy of Frantz Fanon, and
contemporary gun violence in the unstructured essay,
“Post-Logical Notes on Self-Election.” Though she jumps
from Patrick Henry to a list of the poorest American cities
today, the many disparate pieces coalesce into something
of an epic meditation on black existence. This essay, by
itself, is one that should be required reading in high school
or university civics and history classes, especially for its
commentary on the perception of contemporary black
existence. Indeed, she refers to all of us when she writes,
“For many Americans who still did not comprehend how
many innovations they had failed to take note of, [Michelle
Obama’s] presence disrupted the tradition of ignorant black
women,” forcing the reader to immediately confront our
society’s, and quite possibly their own, subliminal biases.
Other sections of Multiply/Divide do not come as easily,
causing confusion and, at times, even discomfort. Much
of the fiction takes the form of abbreviated, sometimes
interrupted, exposition. The feeling is one of reading
someone else’s “truth book,” of looking the half-formed
thoughts that might some day become wisdom but which
are, in their present state, seeming attempts at grandiosity:
“I am not embarrassed admitting a preference for loose
skin,” for example, tells us something, surely, though I
cannot make out what it is. Presented almost completely
in isolation, the phrase suggests something else frustrating
about Walters’ voice: its penchant, in places, to speak almost
entirely in generalizations, in statements which bear no
relation to the surrounding words and which are difficult to
interpret on their own.
The most challenging section, a poem entitled “In Search
of the Face,” implores us to “Follow the bouncing ball.”
In the same section, Walters tell us: “Something obvious
is loneliness, how it always talks about itself in the third
person. It says: Oh never mind, you know what it says.” (I,
for one, do know know quite what it says.) Several other
pieces, more narrative than “Face,” follow in a similar vein,
perhaps trying to explore some urban reality but doing so
in an arterial and consequently impersonal way that muffles
their presumed intended message. This may be by design –
that I, unfamiliar with the kinds of experiences with which
Walters has grappled, should not be able to fully understand,
should not be able to speak on the issues on which she
speaks – and yet it was nevertheless frustrating.
Despite such disappointments, however, Multiply/Divide
remains an important piece for its honest rendition of a
black woman’s thoughts and feelings. The nation burns
with shootings and invective and the promise of a post-
racial narrative punctured by a very present, very violent
reality. We continue to segregate, to incarcerate, and to
misogynate. Though her words may confound at times,
Walters may just be, for certain of her readers, the poet
to help some sites and some lives from disappearing from
memory.
Multiply/Divide: On the American Real and Surreal, by
Wendy S. Walters. Sarabande Books, 204 pages. $15.95.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jack Darcey is in his second year of studying urban planning at
GSAPP at Columbia University. He is particularly interested
in international planning and development and the ways that
infrastructure and design can be leveraged for positive social change.
Trans | URBAN | 26
WENDY S. WALTERS
Multiply/Divide
accounts of a simple discovery until they reveal just
enough fragility to hint at a broken history. Others are tales
bordering on or explicitly fiction, considering the ideas that
made the American destiny manifest or positing a black
settlement in post-American Norway. Walters extends
also into a type of reporting, writing on the meaning of
Obama’s presidency and searching for a future in the face
of rising sea levels. Even with such a disparity of genres,
it is often impossible to tell whether one is reading a piece
of fiction or non-fiction: without her categorization of the
essays in her introduction, the reader would have no way of
knowing which was true, which was imagined, and which
was some combination of the two. (Walters makes it clear,
of course, that the notion of non-fiction as “truth” is a
contestable one.)
In the first story in Multiply/Divide, Walters gives us a
little peek into her anxiety which informs the rest of the
collection, with each story touching explicitly or not on the
reality of black life in America. In one section, she links
the march from Selma to the reaction to black women on
dating websites to Michelle Obama to the police murder
of Oscar Grant; in another, she details her fixation on her
playwright idol, Adrienne Kennedy, following her down
the street and into her hotel in Cleveland before ultimately
feeling too awkward to do much of anything. It is also
about the confusion that she, a light-skinned black woman
married to a white Jewish man, causes and feels. She
recounts how often she is mistaken for her own son’s nanny
and intimating that “...once I was busy caring for my son,
my preoccupation with race shifted away from legitimating
my own identity to seeking out a community that would
acknowledge his.”
Sometimes, Walters stories are her own. These are the most
meaningful and the most understandable. At their best,
these are couched in an anthropological and historical view
of her surrounding environment, particularly so in the
companion pieces both entitled “Manhattanville.” These
two particular stories are at once revelations on a forcedly
changing neighborhood as well as confessions of a young
mother in a not-quite-home place. The narrative weaves
the straightforwardness of a short memoir with a critical
commentary on an ongoing reshaping of the neighborhood,
R E V I E W
BY JACK DARCEY
25 | URBAN | Trans
“A few poets attempted to write about the city’s most
important sites before they disappeared from memory,
but so few people read poetry that those places vanished
anyways.” After 107 pages of newspaper memoir, stinted
retrospections, radio imaginings, and expansive notes of
cultural awareness, Wendy S. Walters issues the reader this
reckoning, a prophecy in the form of a history. It is, perhaps,
an appeal to remember where she comes from, where we
all come from; in the context of President Obama’s first
presidential campaign and the increasing gentrification of
historically black communities, it is also a particularly timely
commentary on our future.
Walters’ newest book, Multiply/Divide: On the American Real
and Surreal, is a collection of biographical essays, thought
lists, and musings on the past and present and future. Some,
like the opening piece entitled “Lonely in America,” are
simple and heartbreaking, appearing first as straightforward
(Sarabande Books.)
18. BEHIND THE SCENES
CONTENT EDITOR
Jack Darcey
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urban.submissions@gmail.com
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