city planning as art

Planning Theory & Practice, Vol. 5, No. 1, 11–32, March 2004

Cities as Art: Exploring the Possibilityof an Aesthetic Dimension in PlanningETalenUniversity of Illinois at Urbana [email protected] TALEN & CLIFF ELLIS

ABSTRACT This article argues that the integration of art and planning has been inadequatelydeveloped, and calls for a renewed exploration of their inter-connection. City planning has hada variable relationship with art, moving between organic, civic minded ideals, and despoticnotions of grandeur. Yet, rather than eschewing this history as nostalgic or irrelevant, there areways in which a connection can be made between planning and art—if art is defined in aparticular way. To accomplish this, it is necessary to first recognize that in the history of thehuman attempt to design cities, the loss of a connection between city planning and art isrelatively recent. It is argued that the lost connection is in part a result of a rejection of modernistnotions of urbanism. Spanning the history of city planning and city making, the notion ofplanning as art was in evidence until the mid-20th century, about the time when modernistspatial ideas took hold. It is argued that divorcing all notions of art from city planning practiceand theoretical development has been detrimental to the profession. The relevance of art to cityplanning needs to be reinvigorated, but this will require new ways of thinking, an acceptance oftraditionalism broadly defined, and may entail new conceptions about the merger of planningwith recent cultural and even scientific theory.

Introduction

“A city cannot be a work of art”, Jacobs (1961, p. 372) counselled, and most plannerswould probably agree. Where city planning, art and beauty were once used almostinterchangeably, the current situation in planning is that the idea of art or beauty israrely, if ever, heard. Often, planners have decried the use of aesthetics in the com-modification of urban places, what Boyer disparagingly calls “the aestheticization ofeveryday life” (Boyer, 1988, p. 55). But does that mean that there is no valid connectionbetween city planning and art or beauty, or that a connection will always be elusive?This article explores the aesthetic dimension in city planning, with the aim of demysti-fying the connection. It is argued that the integration of art and planning has beeninadequately developed, and this article calls for a renewed exploration of their inter-connection.

City planning is so different from what we conventionally view as art, or even ‘artisticprocess’, that it is difficult at first for contemporary planners to pinpoint the connection.For example, art is generally thought of as something that can be objectified and hungon the wall, performed on a stage or put in a park. Architecture is viewed as a fine art,

Emily Talen, Department of Urban and Regional Planning, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 111 TempleBuell Hall, MC-619, 611 Taft Drive, Champaign, IL 61820, USA. Email: [email protected]. Cliff Ellis, Graduate Programin Urban Planning, School of Architecture and Urban Design, University of Kansas, 1465 Jayhawk Blvd., 317 MarvinHall, Lawrence, KS 66045–7614, USA. Email: [email protected]

1464-9357 Print/1470-000X On-line/04/010011-22 2004 Taylor & Francis Ltd

DOI: 10.1080/1464935042000185044

12 E. Talen & C. Ellis

but usually with reference to notable individual buildings. It is generally thought that artdoes not need to account for its social effects in the way that city planning does, and thatartists have great freedom to express personal impressions and interpretations. Art,unlike planning, may revel in pure adventure and innovation. How art is defined, then,becomes a critical point of inquiry.

City planning has had a variable relationship with art, moving between organic, civicminded ideals and despotic notions of grandeur. Yet, rather than eschewing this historyas nostalgic or irrelevant, there may be fruitful ways in which a connection can be madebetween the two processes, if art is defined in a particular way. To accomplish this, it isnecessary to first recognize that, spanning the entire history of the human attempt todesign cities, the loss of a connection between city planning and art is relatively recent.

In addition to an exploration of the connection between art and planning, this articleexplores the problems inherent in attempting to reassert this linkage, and the conceptualframework that could be used to reconnect planning and art in fruitful ways. This studyfocuses exclusively on the American context, since bringing in planning histories andexperiences from Europe and other cultures would require a much wider treatment.Despite this limitation, the American experience illuminates the basic problem clearly;the loss of an aesthetic dimension in planning in the US was transparent.

There are three main sections: a review of the history of city planning’s relationshipto art; a summary of the demise of the interrelationship; and finally a proposal for aframework for re-integrating art and planning. Within these sections, the flow of theargument can be condensed into three main points:

1. Up until the second half of the 20th century, aesthetic concerns played an importantrole in American city planning. This artistic dimension was explored in key texts byprominent city planners and realized in landmark projects. However, after theSecond World War, the connection between art and city planning diminished, ordevolved into a concern for the commodification of aesthetic forms to serve narrowreal estate objectives.

2. The death knell of connecting planning and art was sounded by Jane Jacobs, whoargued that cities cannot be viewed as works of art. However, Jacobs’ critique wasaimed at a particular way of imposing aesthetic order on the city, the top-downapplication of inflexible visions requiring the “total, absolute, and unchallengedcontrol” (Jacobs, 1961, p. 375) of architects and planners. In so doing, she condemnedall forms of art as fundamentally similar projects, and thus failed to make adistinction between contextualized and absolutist notions of aestheticism. The histori-cal record shows that earlier planners had a greater sensitivity to the issues of contextand plurality than is usually thought.

3. Divorcing all notions of art from city planning practice and theoretical developmenthas been detrimental to the profession, and the relevance of art to city planningshould be reinvigorated. This re-evaluation will require new ways of thinking, anacceptance of traditionalism broadly defined, and a willingness to explore theimplications for city planning of new developments in cultural and scientific theory.

What is Art?

The discussion of art and city planning must begin with a definition of terms. While thedefinition of art can be quite elusive, the definition here involves a distinction betweenart defined as individualistic expression in which visual signs are used “to convey ideas,

Cities as Art 13

moods, or generalized emotional experiences” (Ocvirk et al., 1975, p. 6), and aesthetics,a branch of philosophy concerned with the notion of beauty. Beauty is likewise elusiveto define, but can be simply defined as a quality which gives “deep satisfaction to themind, whether arising from sensory manifestations, [or] a meaningful design or pattern”(Webster’s, 1996, p. 184). It is this latter view of art, defined collectively, that can berelevant for city planning.

Aesthetics has formed the basis and primary motivation for the merger of art andplanning. Historically, this relationship was assumed. Progressive Era planners seemedto take the aesthetic definition for granted, and did not spend a great deal of timedefining what they meant by it. It was not necessary to do so. Art in planning was aboutbeauty in urban form and pattern. It was what Camillo Sitte (1889) meant in his treatiseThe Art of Building Cities, what Raymond Unwin (1909) extolled in his Town Planning inPractice, and what underscored Hegemann & Peets’ (1922) textbook The AmericanVitruvius: An Architects’ Handbook of Civic Art.

City Planning as Art

There are different strains in the history of American city planning that involve thelinkage between aesthetics and city planning. The primary goal in this section isstraightforward: it is argued that the various strains involved were not all aboutcentralized authority and aesthetic homogeneity, qualities that would never be accept-able to planners today. It is readily acknowledged that some notions of city planning asart are not congruent with more pluralistic views characteristic of current city planningpractice. But at the same time, there is a misconception that the legacy of earlierplanners—those who were most concerned with the idea that planning and art wereinterconnected—was overbearing and insensitive to context. On the contrary, the artisticnotions of city planning were often context-driven. Establishing this is important becauseit lays the groundwork for a renewal of the ‘city planning as art’ tradition.

The concern for aesthetics in American cities did not start with the City Beautiful era.According to Peterson (1976) there were three antecedents to the City Beautiful, togetherconstituting its “forgotten origins and lost meanings” (p. 53), all of which were small-scale and incrementalist in orientation: municipal art, civic improvement and outdoorart. They all reveal a concern for civic spirit, beauty, artfulness, order, cleanliness—inshort, a respect for urbanity and the embellishment of the public realm. In the 19thcentury, the solution was not usually about abandonment or constructing anew, butrather about beautifying the existing in a multitude of discrete ways. This revealed anintimacy with urbanism that pre-dates Jane Jacobs by almost a century.

The municipal art movement which got underway in the late 19th century wasfocused in particular on small-scale adornment and decorative art, stained-glass andmurals in public buildings, sculpture and fountains in public places such as parks. Themovement sought to improve the city’s appearance through the enterprise of “activatedurbanity” (Peterson, p. 44). Proponents admired European cities and especially Paris, butthey did not condone Haussmann’s approach to slum eradication. In fact, CharlesMulford Robinson, a leading proponent who later championed the City Beautiful,expressed his desire for greater articulation of the diversity of peoples, i.e. immigrants,living in American cities, lamenting that “Russians and Italians live in the same sort ofhouses, of a style that is foreign to both, starving their own natural yearnings anddepriving the city of beauty. All national characteristics are crushed to one monotonous


level of architectural utility, until a part of the city that might be most attractive andinteresting becomes the dullest of all” (Robinson, 1901, p. 211).

The municipal art movement was not necessarily a quest for a ‘White City’ either.Municipal artists sought the “judicious use of color”, as a way to enliven the street(Peterson, p. 45). Many proponents wanted municipal art to be colourful in the sense ofbeing indigenous. Art must appeal to the great masses of the public, wrote Frederick S.Lamb in 1897. It must “tell the story of the human heart”, whereby “the daily struggleof the individual is felt and recorded” (Lamb, 1897, p. 683).

Municipal art proponents did, however, desire order and cleanliness. Its membersdetested crassness, banality, litter, billboards, and pushed for, and got, designed plazaentryways, triumphal arches, monuments in public squares, embellishments on bridges,and planned groupings of public buildings. But they generally stressed small changes.They wanted civic buildings and places adorned, but they were not interested in creatingGrand Manner plans. A Chicago art historian of the period explained that the essentialtask was to “take every element of ugliness one by one, and try to root it out” (Peterson,p. 45, note 20). Small-scale change was a worthy goal. The implication of this is that theexisting urbanity offered something for the municipal artists to work with, an approachfundamentally different than Haussmann’s.

The second antecedent to the City Beautiful is referred to generally as civic improve-ment, and was broader than the first, characterizing in particular the multitude oforganizations that wanted cleanliness, order and beauty in cities and sought to inspireothers to want the same. The concerns of the improvement societies were eclectic. Oneof the organizers of the movement, Jesse Good, wrote “No task is too great for theseassociations to undertake. They will direct the digging of anything from a sewer to aflower bed” (Peterson, 1976, p. 48). By 1906, Robinson reported that there were some2400 improvement societies in the US (Peterson, p. 53), apparently swelled by a grandcivic awakening in which Americans were seeking, as the president of the AmericanCivic Association stated in 1904, “to give us here on earth in our urban habitationsconditions at least approximating those of the beautiful wild into which our forefatherscame a few generations ago” (Scott, 1969, p. 67).

The evolution of these movements into the City Beautiful occurred rapidly, but thelatter movement was short-lived—the lifespan of the City Beautiful was only 10 years,generally dated as being between 1899 and 1909 (Wilson, 1989). In the City Beautiful, theinterest in beauty, which was the hallmark and common denominator of municipal art,civic improvement and outdoor art, reached full flowering, but was also more single-minded and grandiose, moving way beyond the earlier, more modest impulses ofincremental change. It moved, therefore, from ‘activated urbanity’ to contrived urbanity,with significantly different implications.

Another important distinction to make in the history of city planning’s aestheticism isbetween formality and informality in city design. Jonathan Barnett, in The Elusive City(1986), characterizes this as the distinction between the civic art and the city beautifulstrains of ‘urban aestheticism’ in the early 20th century. The development of a formal-ized Civic Art was aligned with a revival of neo-medievalism, and included the writingsof John Ruskin, William Morris and Camillo Sitte. The Austrian architect Sitte wasparticularly influential, emphasizing the importance of preservation, public space, andspace enclosure. Proponents of garden cities made particular use of the aestheticism ofRuskin and Morris, as exemplified by the town plans of Raymond Unwin and BarryParker.

The merger of art and city planning did not die out during the City Efficient, the era

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following the City Beautiful. The years between the City Beautiful and the Second WorldWar had, at least ostensibly, a more overt interest in social goals. Scott (p. 123) describesthe transformation as one of “social impulses” that “crept into” the city beautiful. Whatis important to note is that the city efficient era did not reject beautification as a goal.There was ample talk about the “art of city planning”, the “happy combination of useand beauty”, the integration of “servicableness and charm”, and that “nothing is reallyfinished until it is beautiful” (Nolen, 1909, p. 1). Discussions of the ‘art and science’ ofcity planning were still prominent in the 1930s, for example in Thomas Adams’ (1935)Outline of Town and City Planning.

The integration of city planning and art was often tied to the issue of appropriateness.Raymond Unwin was particularly strong about this, arguing for the need to consider notwhether the formal or the informal is desired, but whether the “requirements of thecase” and the “conditions of the site” have been thoroughly weighed (Unwin, 1909,p. 138). One of Unwin’s favourite quotes was by the painter Jean-Francois Millet(1814–1875), who wrote: “The beautiful is that which is in place” (Creese, 1967, p. 40).John Nolen spoke in similar terms, and even defined beauty as “fitness and appropriate-ness” (Nolen, 1908, p. 2). The view of Nolen and Unwin was that, just as the love forinformality should not be allowed to degrade public convenience, so formal planningshould not justify “riding roughshod” over property lines or the sentiments of residentsand property owners (Unwin, 1909, p. 139). This thinking is what prompted Nolen, onnumerous occasions, to discuss the differences between the landscape planning of LeNotre and Olmsted to demonstrate that while the underlying principles are always thesame, the application of principles is usually different.

The Dutch architect H.P. Berlage is another example of how early planners weresensitive to appropriateness. Berlage wrote in 1908 of the need for “artisticbeautification … of every future community” that not only embodied the quest for“Unity in Plurality”, but that accepted that “all is governed by circumstance andrelationship” (from Banham, 1967, p. 144). Berlage’s sense of architectural order,reflected in his plan-making, was derived from his view of nature as non-arbitrary:“nature is ever thrifty of motifs … modifying them a thousand different ways accordingto the condition of her creatures and their mode of life” (p. 143).

This was perhaps a more sophisticated view of the need for both uniformity andplurality, for an order guided by circumstance, but there is a parallel understanding ofit even in the American City Beautiful. Wilson (1989, pp. 94–95) gives a number ofexamples in which City Beautiful proponents warned of the dangers of stylistic singular-ity, of the problem with accepting Beaux Arts Classicism in all cases. Charles MulfordRobinson understood the choices. Having expressed the importance of unique immi-grant architecture in his earlier treatise, by 1903, now in his full-bodied City Beautifulphase, he wrote that classic architecture was actually ‘bourgeois’, and advocated the useof Flemish Gothic architecture instead.

There are other examples. The landscape architects Frederick Law Olmsted and JohnNolen wrote about the need to design public open spaces according to their specificcontext and purpose (Nolen & Olmsted, 1906). They spelled out six types of open spaces,three types of playgrounds, and three types of parks. Nolen was particularly interestedin street design, stressing the importance of understanding the place and function of thestreet before prescribing its specifications. It was the inappropriateness of street designrelative to place and function that Nolen disdained, writing in 1908: “We have curvedstreets where they should be straight, straight streets where they should be curved,


narrow streets where they should be broad, occasionally broad streets where they shouldbe narrow” (Nolen, 1908, p. 7).

Writing much later, in the mid-1930s, Thomas Adams, one of the most prominent cityefficient era planners, tied the doctrine of appropriateness to the essence of the artisticprocess. He stated, “As in all art it is not the name of what you do that counts but howyou do it in relation to time, place, and surroundings” (Adams, 1935, p. 321). He spokeof the need, therefore, for planners to be equipped with the gift of ‘intuition’.

The issue of maintaining the individuality of every city was a particular concern forearly urban planners, stated repeatedly as a counter response to the critique thatplan-making was prone to boiler-plating. Unwin referred to the individuality of urbancharacter as “the poetry of its existence” (Unwin, 1909, p. 146). In fact, the attempt toinstill individuality was seen as the essential task of beautification. Nolen wrote of theneed to instill “love and pride in local traditions and local ideals” (Nolen, 1909, p. 74),a theme he repeated often. Urban beauty was a matter of cultivating urban excellencederived from local custom. By the time Nolen wrote “Civic art furnishes the mostavailable means to express these local customs” (from Scott, p. 98), Nolen had rejectedthe City Beautiful but nevertheless saw it as a means for accomplishing the goal ofaffirming local aspirations.

It is the idea that the merger between planning and art necessarily entails a certaindegree of authoritarianism, homogeneity, and insensitivity to context that has con-tributed to the dissolution between planning and aesthetics. In particular, the seeminginflexibility of aesthetic ideals on the part of City Beautiful architects was criticized forstifling the creative expression of American architecture (Mumford, 1968). The issue hasa long history. The attempt to accommodate diversity within uniformity was alreadyrecognized as a fundamental problem of city design in the mid-18th century (Kostof,1991, p. 261). In the Progressive Era, the goal of planners was often to do away withuniformity and monotony in the urban landscape. Nolen stressed the view that “citiesdiffer radically, each possessing a personality that separates it from every other” (Nolen,1908, p. 2). It was this originality that planners sought to exploit, rather than letting theforces of capitalism impose a debilitating sameness.

This very brief outline of some of the main currents operating in the formative yearsof city planning shows that city planning as a form of art has thus gone through variousphases. How is it possible to gauge the importance or relevance of these ideas? The viewhere is that it is necessary to make a distinction between incremental, collectivelyoriented notions of aestheticism, and city design that is preoccupied with self-expression,individuality or the dominance of one ruling individual or institution. One is organic,fluid, and derived from a pluralistic view of the city. The other is absolutist anddependent upon centralized authority. There is a world of difference between the artisticpreoccupations of Baroque urbanism in, for example, 16th century Rome, and theaesthetic contributions of more modest city builders associated with the municipal artsor civic improvement movements. Yet these critical distinctions have often been ob-scured, most famously, by Jane Jacobs in her blanket denunciation of City Beautiful,Garden City and Radiant City planners.

As will be argued, understanding the distinction between the ways in which art andcity planning are connected has important implications for their re-integration. Mostimportantly, it is the conception of a monolithic, authoritarian view of art that is at theroot of much of the current disdain for merging art and city planning. That is, thereaction against planning as art is essentially a reaction to planning as autocracy,absolutism and the misuse of power. This difference is crucial. It is a distinction between

Cities as Art 17

using art to help build cities that are satisfying and commonly recognized as possessingaesthetic value, and, conversely, using art to symbolize the grandeur and authority ofthe state or of a particular ideology or individual.

Why did this transformation happen? Much of the blame can be placed on mod-ernism––specifically modernist urbanism, not the architecture of individual buildings––for the collapse of the aesthetic project of city planning. Jane Jacobs was right to makethe world aware of the problem that this had become. But Jacobs failed to distinguishbetween earlier ideas about aesthetics and city planning and the modernist interpret-ation of them. The arrival of modernist, and then postmodernist and neomodernist,architecture and urbanism made city planning as art problematic in a way that wasfundamentally different from the aesthetics encountered in the earlier phases of cityplanning.

Critiquing Modernist Urbanism

A good deal of blame for the loss of an aesthetic dimension in planning can be placedon modernist urbanism. It is important to be clear that the critique here is limited to thisspecific notion of modernism, which is sometimes said to have started with TonyGarnier and his Cite Industrielle. Displayed in Paris in 1904, the plan was uniquebecause it embraced the basic principles of mass production and industrial efficiency andapplied them to city form. It boldly rejected past historical styles and offered a‘machine-age community’ of hydro-electric plants, aerodromes and highways, all strictlysegregated according to function (LeGates & Stout, p. xxxi). It also separated thebuilding from the street and the pedestrian from vehicular traffic, a clear departure fromtraditional means of shaping the urban public realm.

Modernist urbanism reached full flowering by the 1950s and exerted a powerful effecton urban form that is widely familiar. These effects can be summarized as: theseparation of land uses, the accommodation of the automobile in the form of high-speedhighways, the rejection of the street and street life, the treatment of buildings as isolatedobjects in space rather than as part of the larger interconnected urban fabric, theencouragement of unformed space, the rejection of the traditional elements of street,square and plaza, the demolition of large areas of the city to make unfettered places fornew urbanism, and the creation of enclosed malls and sunken plazas.

The ideas have been referred to as the Functionalist Movement (Trancik, 1986), butwere essentially the main tenets of the organized group, the Congres Internationauxd’Architecture Moderne (International Congresses of Modern Architecture), known asCIAM. As Eric Mumford recounts in his detailed study, The CIAM Discourse on Urbanism,1928–1960, the CIAM definition of urbanism was essentially a continuation of longstand-ing ideas that had taken hold by the 1920s, that is, the focus on efficiency in city-build-ing, the strong belief in the ability of technology to solve social problems, and thereliance on the master planner/expert to accomplish a better world (Mumford, 2000).Thus CIAM was in many ways a continuation of earlier planning ideals.

However, CIAM architects, the promoters of modernist urbanism, parted companywith more traditional approaches to urban reform by embracing entirely new ways ofthinking about cities. Traditional and historically referenced urban forms were notallowed to be part of the new modern city. The new ideology, abstracted and ‘free’, wassuperior because of its newness. This meant that ideas were often taken to their extremeconclusion. Principles were abstracted, traditional methods of place-making were re-jected, and architects, working under this freedom of expression, were individually


given much credit for the ability to change society. Le Corbusier’s belief that Tayloristproduction strategies were “natural” and therefore “above politics” (Mumford, 2000,p. 20) is indicative of the kind of city-building approach that was in fact antithetical tothe more humanistic thinking of planners like Geddes and Unwin. The latter groupsought individual liberation through collective enterprise, something CIAM also claimedconcern for, but which CIAM arrived at through a completely different urban logic. Thatlogic was about arranging and combining the material elements of urbanism as if theywere pawns on a chessboard.

In short, the CIAM movement’s proposal for a modernist urbanism gave expressionto an anti-urbanism that went far beyond anything that had been put forward before,and crafted a supporting language that replaced all prior conceptions. While a proposedfocus on collectivism, the merger of art and science, and the ability of architecture andurbanism to create social cohesion were not new or uniquely co-opted by CIAMmembers, CIAM transformed these in a way that was so abstract and so removed fromhistory, local condition and pedestrian scale that they became a fundamentally differentproject. The denial of history was not only expedient (which indeed it was), but it wasseen as a positive way to gain insight into urban reality.

Despite denunciations by planners, modernism continues to dictate patterns of urbangrowth and form. While it would seem that no one should be more disillusioned withmodernism than urban planners, the planning response to modernism seems surpris-ingly tentative. American planning academics have been suspicious of the New Urban-ism and quite hesitant to embrace its principles. Euclidean, single-use zoning, thequintessentially modernist approach to spatial segregation and functionalism, continuesto flourish. While it is recognized that planners are only partly responsible for itscontinued conventional application, their reluctance to seek a more wholesale rejectionof zoning-cum-modernism is evident. One wonders, in fact, why the modernist planningparadigm has not been definitively abandoned and replaced with a clear alternative.

The article here considers the rejection of modernist urbanism for the purpose ofsetting up the distinction between two notions of art, one that is appropriate to planning,and one that is not. In particular, the focus is on architecture as a form of art, and whatvarying perspectives of the role of architecture in city building have meant for urbanplanning. Further, it is believed that the rejection of art in planning is essentially arejection of the modernist view of art in planning, not necessarily the city planning as artapproach that flourished in the early decades of city planning. Thus a critique ofmodernism is essential to the task. Three of the most relevant critiques of modernism areconsidered: the cult of the individual, the phenomenon of decontextualization and theinterrelated issues of fragmentation and specialization.

Cult of the Individual

The planning and design of cities is deeply affected by architectural theory. Thus theidea that architects are unconstrained, unfettered artists whose main responsibility is tobe innovators has had a profound effect. Specifically, the modernist paradigm ofarchitect as ‘individual genius’ results in a preoccupation with individuality rather thancommonality, an emphasis on innovation as an end rather than a means (Krier, 1998).The heroic architect elevated to cult figure status is very much a part of currentapproaches to city-building.

Glorification of individual architects and their buildings has always been in evidence.But under modernist urbanism, there were different consequences. Architectural projects

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by individual master planners contributed to an urbanism composed of isolated build-ings, free floating in space—megastructures in superblocks. Freestanding and competing‘towers’ vied for attention while contributing nothing to the integration of space or theurban fabric as a whole. In combination with the stripped down ‘International Style’,and the decontextualized and purified aesthetics of the Bauhaus, the principle of thehigh-rise set in green space eventually translated into high-rise slab housing projects thatwere nothing less than disastrous. Under CIAM architectural dogma, such housingprojects were made to appear like the only logical, rational choice (Mumford, 2000).

The current status of this phenomenon is that architecture operates under a veil ofwhat Duany et al. (2000) call ‘mysticism’. This mystical practice is sustained by importingideas from disciplines that are completely unrelated to architecture, and by cloakingarchitectural designs in ‘inscrutable jargon’ (Duany et al., p. 213). In architectural schools,ideas are represented in ways that are abstract and often unintelligible, but this isaccepted. The result is that the relevance of architecture for the actual construction of theAmerican landscape is shrinking (Dunham-Jones, 2000). The vast realm of subdivisiondesign and production building remains relatively untouched by professional architec-ture as it is manifested in the leading magazines and educational institutions. A cynicalview is that this situation is deliberate on the part of architects: the smaller the realm ofcommunication, the more they are able to assert control over that realm. In any case, thepreoccupations of the architectural avant-garde inhabit a rarefied world set apart fromthe mundane process of mass producing tract homes, office parks, and strip malls acrossthe American landscape (Dunham-Jones, 2000).

The dissatisfaction with the modernist tendency to promote individual innovation isreflected in other disciplines. Indian artist Satish Kumar (1995) laments the Western,egocentric view of art, that art has been reduced to “a few great masters, who becometrendy and fashionable and can make lots of money for a few art dealers” (p. 144).Kumar also identifies the outcome of this trend, stating that “we are living in an uglyworld” as a result of putting art in “one little corner, in a compartment, or in art schools”(p. 144). The thesis of Hillman & Ventura (1993) that “We’ve Had a Hundred Years ofPsychotherapy—and the World’s Getting Worse” mirrors this disenchantment with thecult of the individual, with self-reflection and a focus on inner psyche that ultimatelydoes not produce a better, more humane world.

What does this mean for city planning? First, the constant search for innovation inarchitecture means that the reuse and rehabilitation of the older urban fabric isde-emphasized. This constant need for novelty also meshes with the capitalist need tosell new products and make profits. The effect of this on cities has been quite damaging.Planners have recognized this for a long time, but have somehow failed to have mucheffect on redirecting the quest for novelty. The result is a destructive cycle in whichurban forms that were new become obsolete quickly, as currently manifested in thedeath of strip malls and ‘big box’ chain stores that may have once been novel.Meanwhile, under-used urban spaces—lost spaces and derelict buildings—make up asignificant portion of our urban landscapes.

The other way in which the emphasis on individual innovation in city-buildingdamages cities is that it lessens the relevance of communally shared spaces—spaces thathave not been commercially exploited for a particular company or product. In short, ittends to de-emphasize the importance of the public realm. Where novelty and inno-vation in architecture were not predominant, such as in the earlier part of the 20thcentury, buildings were subordinate to the public realm (Kunstler, 1996). The problemwith the cult of the individual, and the individual building, is that it tends to dissolve


the public realm. Space formed by individualized buildings does not serve well as theconnective tissue of cities.

Decontextualization

Modernist urban planning also tends to decontextualize building sites. When thishappens, abstract ideas are applied to buildings as objects with little thought given totheir surroundings. This was the agenda of Functionalism, championed by SigfriedGiedion in Space, Time and Architecture (1941). Unfortunately, and perhaps somewhatunintentionally, the ideas of “free-flowing space and pure architecture” evolved into ourcurrent desolate landscape of isolated buildings in parking lots and along highways(Trancik, 1986). As a result, the importance of the spaces between buildings—streets,pavements, courtyards, commons, greens and public squares—was ignored. This means,essentially, that modern space is ‘anti-space’ (Peterson, 1980) or ‘negative space’ (Alexan-der et al., 1975). Buildings as purified forms become the ‘towers in a park’ muchmaligned by planners but still a common feature of today’s urban landscapes.

Decontextualization means that the principles of urbanism and of designing cities ona human, pedestrian-oriented scale are often ignored. This has an effect not so much onthe social relationships that people form, which endure even under the most anti-communal circumstances, but in terms of what Trancik calls “a collective sense of themeaning of public space” (p. 11). Similarly, it encourages what Leon Krier calls the“insatiable drive for autonomy”, the need for a tabula rasa view of urban development.As a result, individual buildings are often out of keeping with their surroundings andeven with entire sections of a city.

Decontextualization evolved from the notion of functionalism, the idea that spaceshould be pure, unbounded and free-flowing. What this meant for cities was vividlyportrayed in the modernist manifesto, Can Our Cities Survive? An ABC of Urban Problems,their Analyses, their Solutions: Based on the Proposals Formulated by CIAM, written by JoseLuis Sert, published in 1942, and containing the statement of principles known as theAthens Charter. Meant for the mass American public, the polemic of the functional citywas strongly argued in the text, but its presentation was abstract. Details of urban form,planning and design are lacking, perhaps as a way of ensuring that the mistakes of pasturbanism with its ‘parade’ of mere aesthetics, would not be repeated. For, as JosephHudnut argued in the preface, city design in places like Paris had “a basis no firmer thana logic of form and a reward no deeper than an aesthetic experience”. The antidote wasa city planning that was based on “those processes by which material things are shapedand assembled for civic use” (Hudnut, in Sert, p. iv).

What is missing from the polemic is the notion of place-making, the importance oflocal context, and what Lewis Mumford called “social and civic character” (Mumford,1968, p. 119). Goals and principles were based on scientific, ‘rational’ decision-makingdevoid of recognition of the importance of culture and symbolism, as if progress werea matter of geometric order. The focus on speed and efficiency, combined with thepursuit of a “cold and sober aesthetic” (Boyer, 1988, p. 282), extinguished the ability toappreciate and make use of past urban forms, existing context, and traditional principlesof urbanism.

Specialization and Fragmentation

As a result of individualism and decontextualization, modernism produces cities com-

Cities as Art 21

posed of fragmented land uses (Barnett, 2003). This can be seen as an outgrowth of theidea that buildings are isolated objects that ‘sit’ in the landscape, unconnected to a largernetwork of urban spaces. Not only does this sever the relationship between the insideand the outside of a building, but it results in what Trancik (1986) terms “lost” or“anti-space’, the “leftover unstructured landscape” found in every American city thatresults from under-used parking lots, windswept plazas, and leftover land along linearfeatures such as highways.

Another aspect of this fragmentation is the extreme separation of land uses intosingle-use zones, requiring connection exclusively through motor vehicle trips. Walkingand transit become impossible within such patterns, forcing all age and income groupsinto dependence on the automobile (Newman & Kenworthy, 1999). In addition, travel inmotor vehicles renders impossible the informal contact with other urban dwellers thatoccurs naturally in a pedestrian environment. Travellers are contained within high-speedmoving capsules of metal and glass, and forced into an unpleasant competition for roadspace on crowded arterials.

The organization of the urban environment in terms of the essential categories(functions) of dwelling, work, transportation and recreation was referred to by Jacobs asthe act of “sorting”, which she saw as highly destructive. In the US, the proliferation ofzoning by functional use category was already well underway in the 1920s. Toward theend of the 1920s, it figured prominently in the RPA’s Regional Plan of New York andEnvirons, to be reinforced again when separation by function constituted the theme ofCIAM’s 1933 congress. Using statistics to project the amount of land needed for aparticular use, this ‘rational’ approach, still relied upon today, was an exercise in datamanipulation for the purpose of separation, where the detailed aesthetic qualities of thebuilt environment had become secondary or even irrelevant.

In each of these ways—the cult of the individual, decontextualization, specializationand fragmentation—modernism as an aesthetic project, manifested through architectureand urbanism in particular, has failed city planning. While all of these conditions arewell known to planners, planners have failed to galvanize a more concerted reaction, inpart because of the aesthetic nature of these problems. In other words, because cityplanning has dropped its concern for the integration of art and city planning, it lacks thevocabulary and analytical tools needed to be able to address the modernist assault on itsown terms. It is conceivable that if aesthetic issues were higher on the planning agenda,planners would have an easier time of differentiating aesthetics that are damaging fromaesthetics that can be used to further the essential goals of city planning.

The Dissolution of Art in Planning

All of the conditions of modernism outlined above may be well known to city planners.While the critiques may appear to be the rallying cry of neo-traditionalism in cityplanning, multiple perspectives have weighed in on the same basic set of issues (seeBeatley, 2000; Birch, 2001; Garvin, 2002).

What may be less well known, or at least not acknowledged, is the void that the lossof an aesthetic dimension has created. In her critique of cities as works of art, Jane Jacobsattacked the “regimented regularity” (Jacobs, 1961, p. 376) of modernist urbanism and itsfailure to appreciate the “ordered complexity” of great cities. But there are important


differences between modernist and other concepts of art and how they can be used incity planning. One of the most important differences has to do with the role of theindividual. Le Corbusier did not waiver from his belief in the architect’s grand scheme;the supremacy of the master architect and the legitimacy of imposing a single, orderedvision. The fact that this idea was fundamentally different from the notion of artespoused by many of the earlier, Progressive Era planners, is an historical fact that needsreiterating.

For example, the work of Patrick Geddes in India and elsewhere reveals a planningapproach that valued beauty, but was also concerned with preserving the existing,underlying forms of complex order in the city. Sitte, from whom Geddes drew inspi-ration, was interested in seeking out the elements of the city that produced harmoniouseffect, but he was also concerned with preservation. Above all, he was interested inidentifying those elements of city form that produced a satisfying effect versus those thatdid not. This was the ongoing task of an aesthetic approach to planning, an approach towhich both Geddes and Sitte’s methodology of empirical observation were readilyaddressed.

Unfortunately, the separation of art and planning has been accomplished to a largeextent. A review of city planning journals from 1960 to 2002 reveals that the artisticcomponent of city planning is rarely discussed, and when it is mentioned, it is usuallyin the limited context of aesthetic regulations governing signs, building materials andlandscaping. For several decades, commentators have noted the rejection of the aestheticperspective in graduate planning curricula, and its replacement with various modes ofstatistical and economic analysis (Alonso, 1986). Contemporary urban planners seemonly marginally interested in aesthetic ideas or in pursuing the underlying principlesthat create beautiful cities.

While planners have turned away from the artistic side of urbanism, the discourse ofarchitecture seems preoccupied with aesthetic issues, sometimes to the neglect of basicfunctionality and respect for the actual users of buildings. The most bizarre andtransgressive ideas are routinely featured and praised in the architectural press (Lang-don, 2002). Showmanship, wit, originality, intellectual gymnastics and boldness areapplauded. The rejection of tradition is often embraced as the essential starting point forartistic creativity.

From the earliest city improvement efforts to full scale modernism, we have thus seentwo different manifestations of the idea of ‘planning as art’. Modernism, on the onehand, seeks universal, utopian forms that are free from tradition and history, whereasthe earlier ideas about the art of city planning often connected to and built uponhistorical forms. The modernist vision of the future can be seen in Le Corbusier’s VilleRadieuse or Ludwig Hilberheimer’s city plans of the 1920s, while earlier plannersreturned to the glories of Paris, Vienna, San Francisco, Charleston and Savannah. In anearlier time, art in city planning was a matter of respecting collective notions of beautyrooted in tradition, not constantly breaking away from all earlier forms in the pursuit ofnovel experiments.

Planners can make use of these earlier models to develop an approach to city buildingthat generates beautiful places without destroying the organized complexity of the city.The term ‘traditionalism’ could be used to describe such an approach. For some, thisterm is negatively associated with nostalgia, small town homogeneity, theme parkcommodification, repressive design control and social exclusion. This need not be thecase. As Krier argues, “tradition and progress are not antinomical notions” (1998, p. 64),and progress can be viewed as building upon and extending tradition rather than

Cities as Art 23

violently overthrowing it. But given the difficulties, discourse in other disciplines can bedrawn upon to help formulate an effective use of the notion of collective aestheticism.Notably, discussion about the relative merits of modernism vs. collective notions ofbeauty is an ongoing debate in the art world. This has surfaced in particular in debatesin the US Congress about the funding priorities of the National Endowment of the Arts,which struggles to find the proper balance between sponsorship of avant-garde ‘shockof the new’ productions and more democratic, humanized, tradition-based art forms.

Traditionalism should not be confused with postmodernism in planning. Whilepostmodernism attempted, as Nan Ellin (1996) writes, to satisfy longings for community,security, intrigue and adventure lacking in modernism, the strategy of historicizing andtheming did not correct these failures, and sometimes even worsened them. Plannersshould be dubious of a merger of planning and art that amounts to a postmodernhistoricizing in which style overtakes substance. Postmodernism aside, the main tensionremains that between the modernist ideal of unfettered innovation and collective notionsabout beauty, timeless principles, and the integration between art and life.

It should be emphasized that re-establishment of an aesthetic notion in city planningwould not be the same as aestheticism in planning as it existed a century ago. Theaesthetic project in planning would be about re-instigating the search for beauty in urbanpatterns and forms. This is the project of traditionalism, a term which does not describewell what earlier planners’ aesthetic concerns were about, but which may have somerelevance for planners today. The notion of ‘traditionalism’ does not imply uncriticalallegiance to the past, as though one could ignore changes in technology and society, butrather a process of building upon those elements from the past that are still valid today,and that can be fused with innovations from our own time. George Santayana alludedto this process when he wrote:

Ideas that have long been used may be used still, if they remain ideas andhave not congealed into memories. Incorporated into a design that calls forthem, traditional forms cease to be incongruous, as words that still have a feltmeaning may be old without being obsolete. All depends on men subservingan actual ideal and having so firm and genuine an appreciation of the past asto distinguish at once what is still serviceable in it from what is alreadyghostly and dead. (Santayana, 1933, originally 1905)

If defined in this way, we might expect planning to be more accepting of art. This isespecially true since planning, unlike architecture, has never embraced the idea thatinnovation or individual artistic creativity is an end in itself. Planners have been morecircumspect and grounded in the gritty realities of existing cities, and aware of thepractical difficulties of providing affordable housing, infrastructure and transportationfor urban dwellers. Similarly, planners are usually taught to be at least somewhatsensitive to the way that individual buildings fit together to form a coherent landscape,which militates against the acceptance of radically decontextualized buildings.

Lessons from the Art World

The notion of traditionalism as a counter-response to modernism has been debated indisciplines other than planning. By looking at traditionalism as a reaction to modernismin the art world, we might get some insights as to why a counter-proposal to modernismin city planning has not been more forthcoming. In the world of art, meaning not only


art forms themselves but also the critiques, histories and institutions that sustain art,these issues have surfaced as fundamentally opposed cultural paradigms.

On the one hand, the avant-garde embraces the notions that beauty is subjective,human nature is socially constructed, all hierarchies diminish human freedom, and thatthere are no fundamental realities on which to base our ideas and actions. Counterpoisedto this view is the position that beauty is an objective reality with cross-cultural validity,that human beings share a nature or deep structure, that hierarchies are built into thevery structure of the universe and make freedom possible, and that common orfoundational realities underlie the vast diversity of human experience.

Recent writings in cultural philosophy have focused on these distinctions. FrederickTurner (1995) articulates the need for a ‘radical centre’ paradigm in which the objective,cross-cultural validity of beauty is recognized. Other anti-relativists have argued for aphilosophy that does not separate fact from value, and in which virtues can be identifiedand ranked. Applied to the realm of scientific inquiry, philosopher Susan Haack (1998)has labelled the absence of this ability “preposterism”, whereby “finding out how thingsreally are” is viewed as nothing more than a “smokescreen hiding the operations ofpower, politics, social negotiation [and] rhetoric” (p. 1).

In line with these views, there is a growing movement in art that recognizes the valueof traditionalist views about beauty. Its lineage includes the important work of JoseOrtega y Gasset and his book The Dehumanization of Art, first published in 1948. In it,Ortega attacks modern art because it tends “to dehumanize art, [avoid] living forms,[and] to see to it that the work of art is nothing but a work of art” (p. 14). A more recentcritique laments the rise of ‘autonomous art’, and the loss of a sense of aesthetics. SuziGablik has explored this changing conception of art through interviews with variousprominent artists in her book Conversations Before the End of Time (1995). One Indianartist, Satish Kumar, argues for the “resacralization” of art and nature. Art is meant todefine the communal, not the individual self or the artist as a special genius. Kumarbelieves that “The dichotomous thinking that has separated art from life, and segregatedaesthetic experience to the exclusive realms of the museum, [means] that we are left tolive in an otherwise ugly world” (1995, p. 136).

The emphasis on beauty and the traditionalist view of art is a rejection of the way inwhich modernist art is divorced from what Richard Shusterman (1995) calls “the practiceof living”. Art should not be confined to wall space in a museum, Shusterman argues,and doing so is “a pathetic failure of theoretical as well as artistic imagination” (p. 265).Part of the traditionalist counter-proposal, then, is about developing an art that is moreengaged with the needs of the world, one that is less about autonomy and the supposed‘freedom’ of isolation and individuality. This kind of integration has implications for cityplanning. The main tenets of traditionalism in art, as a counter-proposal to modernism,include the need for a participatory, interactive kind of art, the need to avoid separationof art and life, and the need to integrate art and nature. It is precisely these emphaseson integration that can be used to support the connection between aesthetics and cityplanning.

Traditionalism in Art vs. Traditionalism in Planning

Traditionalism offers an alternative to the more negative aspects of modernism inplanning, i.e. hyper-individualism, decontextualization, fragmentation, and specializa-tion, yet it has not been widely embraced as an alternative. Based on the foregoingdiscussion of the difference between traditionalism and modernism in the context of art,

Cities as Art 25

what aspects of this debate could be applied to planning? Drawing on the historicallyrooted notion that planning and art are interlinked, what useful analogies or insightsfrom the art world can be made in seeking to understand planning’s relationship totraditionalism? Can the tenets of traditionalism found in art be similarly applied whenused in a planning context?

Participatory and Interactive

First, traditionalism in art calls for a participatory, interactive approach. Certainlyplanning shares a similar concern. Some critics argue that traditionalist approaches tocity design, which tend to support compact, pedestrian oriented urbanism, simply offera new ‘totalizing’ model of urban form, different from modernism in substance but stillreductive and oppressive. In this view, both modernism and traditionalism embody a setof ‘transcendent’ values that, in fact, have no such stable foundation. This leads to anominous quest for what Holston (1998), in a critique of modernist planning, terms the“rational domination of the future”, that is, “an alternative future based on absenttotalities”. If this is also true of traditionalism, then it is yet another attempt by masterplanners to avoid or ignore the contradiction and conflict of real cities, and to evade thechallenges of true public participation in the planning process.

However, those who support traditionalism in city planning (for example, the NewUrbanists), argue that public participation is fundamental to their paradigm. This issupported by the fact that traditional urbanism as a type of city form has been found tobe preferred by residents of urban neighbourhoods in the US (Deitrick & Ellis, 2000)because it is comprehensible, functional, attractive, dignified, and respectful of localcharacter. A growing body of case studies indicate that this type of planning can involvethe sustained participation of local residents and produce results that respond effectivelyto their preferences (Jones et al., 1995; Urban Design Associates, 2003).

The Merger of Art and Life

Another aspect of traditionalism in art that is a response to modernism is the idea thatart and life should become merged. Kumar (1995) states: “How to bring art andeveryday life together is the concern … Integration—because art and life have somehowbecome separated” (p. 138). Interestingly, with respect to city planning, Jane Jacobs(1961) sharply criticized the idea of merging art and life, and viewed this as one of thehallmarks of modernism. In her chapter on ‘Visual Order: Its Limitations’ she rejectedthe imposition of aesthetic order from above:

To approach a city, or even a city neighborhood, as if it were a largerarchitectural problem, capable of being given order by converting it into adisciplined work of art, is to make the mistake of attempting to substitute artfor life. (p. 373)

This, Jacobs asserted, was the folly of 19th-century Utopians, Garden City proponents,City Beautiful planners and modernists such as Le Corbusier. In this view, cities cannotbe works of art, because when vital they are shaped by millions of small acts of building,inhabiting and incremental modification, not the blueprint concepts of a master builder.

For Jacobs, the planner’s task is to “illuminate, clarify and explain the order of cities”(p. 375). People tend to lack a comprehension of this order because cities lack the right‘visual reinforcements’ or they may even exhibit ‘visual contradictions’. Cities have an


underlying order and coherence amidst seeming complexity and chaos, much the sameway that the seemingly random act of leaves falling from a tree actually manifests anunderlying system of order. Interestingly, Jacobs prefers precisely those emphases,suggestions and visual reinforcements that are characteristic of the traditional city, thefeatures that modernism has tried to erase, such as the visual interruption of streetvistas, “cutting off the indefinite distant view and at the same time visually heighteningand celebrating intense street use by giving it a hint of enclosure and identity” (p. 380).

Jacobs sees her suggestions for enhancing the visual order of cities as tactics ratherthan set designs. Such tactics improve the city by “bits and pieces that supplement eachother and support each other” (p. 390). But these tactics, which are posed as analternative to the modernist merger of art and life, are not dissimilar from the ‘mannersand rules’ of traditional city form (Robertson, 1981). Unfortunately, Jacobs’ abbreviatedand polemical history of urban planning blurred together planners with quite differentagendas, City Beautiful, Garden City, Radiant City, and failed to make critical distinc-tions between the ‘geometrical fundamentalism’ (Mehaffy & Salingaros, 2002) of themodernists and the restrained but imaginative traditionalism of planners such asRaymond Unwin, John Nolen, and Eliel Saarinen. To lump all of these planners togetherin a single category erases critical distinctions between art as an expression of power andauthority and art as an aesthetic of incremental, collective decision making.

The Merger of Art and Nature

Another aspect of traditionalism that has relevance for planning is the idea of mergingart and nature. Many precedents for this have been documented in the history oflandscape architecture (Newton, 1971), and the search for better ways to integrate cityform and natural process (Hough, 1995; Condon, 1996; Condon & Proft, 1999) continuestoday.

One approach in planning has been to link urban to rural development intensitiesalong a continuum, and prescribe planning ideals according to this context. This is oneway to merge human development (town) and nature (country). The idea of unitingrather than separating town and country was seen in the regional planning approachadvocated by Geddes, Stein, Mumford and other members of the Regional PlanningAssociation of America. More recently, transect planning (Duany & Talen, 2002) hasbeen proposed as a way of basing urban design on an integrated theory of urbanism thatrelates design to context. It therefore offers an alternative approach to finding the correctbalance between urban development and nature, and ties an aesthetic dimension to thisintegration.

Planners like Patrick Geddes (1915) and Benton MacKaye (1925) made use of transectsin their analysis of regions as a way of demonstrating ecological balance and theinterconnection between people and their ecological region. They spoke of the need toview “people, industry and the land as a single unit”, emphasizing “human values handin hand with natural resources” (Mumford, 1925, p. 151), part of a lineage that leadsdirectly to Ian McHarg (1969). Transect planning is an attempt to bring the aestheticdimension into this equation by linking the elements of urban design to their level ofurban intensity. The prescribed elements of planning are based on, theoretically, findingthe proper balance between natural and human-made environments along the rural tourban transect. This approach ties directly into the doctrine of appropriateness that, asargued above, was a strong factor in ‘city planning as art’ at the beginning of the 20thcentury.

Cities as Art 27

Reconnecting Art and Planning

What are the implications of the decline of art in city planning? Many planners maythink of aesthetics as being incompatible with their focus on social science, economics,policy analysis and Euclidean land-use planning, but there are costs to the retreat froman artistic viewpoint. Philip Langdon argues that this shift has contributed to a loss ofcredibility and prestige for urban planners, who are no longer viewed as competentdesigners of high-quality urban places (Langdon, 1994, p. 77).

There seems to be a palpable attitude that modernism has been bad for city planning,but this has not led the planning profession to accept traditionalism as a viablecounter-proposal. Traditionalism is often seen in negative terms, so much so that theneo-traditionalist movement, sensing this hostility, abandoned its originally adoptedterm in favour of New Urbanism, which, as it turns out, was to become similarlydistrusted. What is left is a landscape dominated by tacit or grudging acceptance of thestatus quo.

While the architectural elite has embraced the cult of the avant-garde artist (Hughes,1991; Kuspit, 1993), most planners seem to have abandoned interest in the city as a workof art. The models of social science, policy analysis and conventional land-use planninghave usurped the aesthetic dimension. What is needed is a way to see the city in artisticterms, and at the same time harmonize with Jane Jacobs’ plea for ‘complexity’, demo-cratic participation and incremental change.

There are some avenues for planners to explore. The new science of chaos andcomplexity provides a door through which the city planning profession might becomethe guardian of ‘civic art’, while still remaining allied with the deepest and mostencompassing theories of modern science. As Frederick Turner, Alexander Argyros andother ‘radical centrists’ have argued, there are universal, ‘natural classical’ principlesunderlying great cultural works. Beauty is not completely arbitrary and subjective, butrather grounded in the very structure of the universe, a universe which is orderly butnot deterministic. The key point is that planners do not need to pursue randomness inorder to avoid stifling forms of order.

An argument can be made that traditional urbanism is more consistent with recentscientific theories about the structure of nature than the mechanistic models of mod-ernism. Alexander Argyros has described this as follows:

In other words, I am speculating that the balance between top-down, collec-tive constraints … typical of socialist forms of organization and the bottom-upindividualism, freedom, mobility, eccentricity, and energy of capitalism willproduce forms of social organization that most closely resemble chaos: neitherrandom, like the shopping strip cities polluting the American landscape, nordeterministic, like the bleak cities of Marxist-Leninist regimes, but chaotic,like the great cities of the world, those marvelous and enchanting places suchas Venice, Paris, Barcelona and San Francisco where the heart rejoices at themarriage of classicism and anarchy. (Argyros, 1991, p. 331)

In short, beautiful cities inhabit the edge between order and disorder. They carryforward a tradition of city design that can legitimately be continued and extended. Forthis to happen, it must be recognized that there is no irreconcilable conflict betweentradition and innovation. Some have argued that innovation best happens within thecontext of a tradition:

This involves realizing that mature dependence … on tradition is the only


way of developing one’s youthful avant-garde innovations, which meansdetermining whether they really are as original, creative, and critical—genu-inely radical—as they initially seemed to be … It means linking up with thetradition one repudiated to become avant-garde. It means being willing tosubmit one’s work for comparison with works that are traditionally regardedas historically significant and masterful … Most crucially, in identifying withtradition, the artist identifies with and joins humanity. He is no longer themocking, murderous adolescent standing outside it, but wants what it wants:happiness. (Kuspit & Gamwell, 1996, pp. 16–17)

Similarly, modernist and neomodernist theories of urbanism must be scrutinized to seewhether they really produce good city form, as opposed to expressing novelty for itsown sake. It is time to reconsider the uncritical rejection of tradition that dominated theperiod from 1940–2000, and chart a new course.

What are the implications of this position for urban and regional planning? It meansthat planners should not be averse to searching for those principles that enable cities tounfold as works of art. Cities need not unfold in the form of abstract, sculpturalcompositions or totalitarian blueprints, but rather in ways that are participatory andinteractive, integrative of art and life, and sensitive to the need to merge art and nature.This may involve, for example, finding and strengthening complex, fractal patterns thatallow for infinite variety within a range of overarching patterns. But it also means thatplanners do not need to scoff at the ‘natural classical’ principles of city planning thatallow cities to be collective works of art unfolding through time. Such processes do notinvolve ‘one size fits all’ or ‘totalizing order’—there is plenty of room for variation anddifference within the basic principles.

Speaking a particular language that necessarily involves rules and limitations does notdestroy creativity: rather, it makes creativity possible. In the same way, possessing abody of principles that capture the most essential spatial relationships required for adignified, beautiful habitat is not a crippling limitation, but rather a basic condition forsuccessful planning. We do not have to choose between ‘regressive tradition’ or‘nihilistic play’ (Kolb, 1990, p. 17). The rules of good urbanism are capacious enough tosustain both the coherence required to compose a high-quality urban habitat and thereworkings, inventions and inspirations that keep a tradition from freezing up andstifling adaptation to changed circumstances. Neither “blind traditionalism” nor“uncritical progressivism” (Roth, 1983, p. 58) are appropriate guides in the quest forgood city form, and city planning can be carried on without falling prey to eitherextreme.

Implications for Planning Practice and Education

If it is time for the profession of city and regional planning to reclaim its artisticdimension, then what might this mean in practical terms? What are the implications forplanning practice and planning education? The following possibilities are offered:

• Planning education should include the study of great cities with the explicit goal ofidentifying the spatial elements that make them great (Jacobs, 1993; Moudon, 1995).Planners will have a difficult time establishing legitimacy as stewards of city form ifthey operate from a weak and disorganized palette of design ideas. Beauty in citydesign needs to be nurtured by a thorough understanding of precedents (Duany et al.,2003) along with ongoing research into what works and what does not.

Cities as Art 29

• Planning students must learn how to navigate aesthetic principles through the tanglesof planning law, real estate economics, political debate and social conflict. Implemen-tation in the real world of land development is the ultimate goal. Planning studios andworkshops are a good way to develop such skills, and should be a part of everyplanning curriculum.

• Modernist-based Euclidean zoning needs to be replaced, and this replacement re-quires an adept understanding of good city form. More specifically, the damagingoversimplifications of conventional zoning should be replaced by regulations basedupon typology—types of buildings, streets and public spaces––and the theory of thetransect (Duany, 2002), which specifies appropriate design standards for differentlandscapes, ranging from the urban core to the rural periphery. While some separationof land uses is reasonable, the crude zoning districts of suburbia are far too clumsyand exaggerated to produce good urban places.

• Much of the beauty of old cities derives from the slow, incremental growth of urbanfabric (Alexander et al., 1975; Alexander et al., 1987; Gombrich, 1965). Planners shouldbe working to identify the best ways to emulate or approximate this complexity andintricacy in the context of the modern real estate industry, which typically in the USbuilds in large increments planned out far ahead of time. We need to know how thepleasing, fractal quality of great cities can still be achieved without returning topre-modern modes of building.

• Planners should work to develop better tools to support the return of aestheticconsiderations in city planning. For example, it may be useful to bring back thetradition of the ‘city map’ which previously served as the armature for coherent townbuilding (Solomon, 1992). Related to this, there is a need to strengthen the legal basisfor aesthetic regulation. To accomplish this, planners will need to reclaim theirheritage as the designers of street patterns and the three-dimensional form of blocks,lots and public spaces.

Conclusion

Urban planning is at a juncture where it must decide whether to press forward with themodernist project or consider other directions for city form. So far, the profession has notengaged this issue with the seriousness and gravity that it deserves. This article hasargued that the merger of art and city planning was, at an earlier time, a positiveapproach that was more context driven and collective than is usually recognized.Consideration was then given to the issue of modernism vs. traditionalism as two verydifferent aesthetic approaches, and it was argued that it would be fruitful for planningto consider the basis of traditionalism and its relevance to the integration of planningand art. The principles of modernist urbanism, enunciated and dramatized by thearchitectural avant-garde, have turned out to be based on erroneous foundations that arenot even consistent with modern science (Agyros, 1991; Salingaros, 1995, 2000; Turner,1995).

An attempt has been made to shed light on the condition of modern urban planningby looking at similar debates in the world of art, where the battle between modernismand traditionalism has been stark and uncompromising. There, we find that the cult ofthe avant-garde artist and the uncritical embrace of innovation, randomness and individ-ual whim has reached the point of diminishing returns, and the validity of workingwithin a tradition is reasserting itself.

The article has also tried to cut through a fundamental confusion about the artistic


component of city planning. Jane Jacobs was right that, in one sense, cities ought not tobe treated like works of art. Cities are not paintings, sculptures or miniature modelsauthored by a single artist. They do not thrive under totalitarian control. There must befree play for thousands of individual experiments and adaptations of the kind thatcannot appear during the execution of a blueprint. But there is another conception of“the city as a work of art” that was in evidence in an earlier planning era. It is an artthat merges our knowledge of and experience with great cities with the principles ofcomplexity, as revealed thus far by modern science. Cities can be seen as great collectiveworks of art unfolding through time, not in the absence of planning, but rather througha balance between overarching principles and local variation. These are the patterns thatthe new science of chaos and complexity continues to explore, which underpin theprocesses that produced the great cities of the past, and which promise to produce amore humane and rooted urban landscape in the future.

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