I've organized these around the theme of "Lessons and Carols," ala a Christmas Eve service: one lesson paired with something lighter--in this case, a photo I didn't get to use to illustrate something in the series. And as is traditional at least at my wife's church, we'll be doing 7 of them.
Lesson 1: Consider Scope
Let's start with a lesson about how I did CityBracket itself. While I am glad to have chosen cities that I had such a close personal connection to (not to mention many photos of!), and it was helpful for me to think through the various places I've been and lived, that still produced some major issues with the bracket itself. Limiting to US cities might have been a good start, given that the two pairings of non-US cities produced the two finalists. Or, alternatively, expanding to have more international cities (Montreal, Paris, Amsterdam, to name three that I have particular thoughts about) might have helped with the scope of the bracket, and the sense that some of the matchups were a bit unfair to those involved.
Related to that: to me, the biggest "what ifs" of this bracket are the two losing international cities, both of which went out in round 1 and both of which gave their eventual finalist national brethren a relatively close contest. Where would Oxford have ended up if it had started in a group with Louisville or Milwaukee, rather than wiping out against big brother London? After all, it got as many points against London as Vancouver did in the final, and outdid both Baltimore and Boston. Likewise, how far could Toronto have gone against most American competition, instead of Vancouver in round 1? The groupings make sense to me, based on my personal experiences of the cities, but they did produce some quick exits for some major contenders. Maybe seeding would have helped?
Carol 1:
There really wasn't any reason to provide this picture of street art in Croydon, but I really like it, and it speaks to an element of Lesson 2, as well.
Lesson 2: Culture Matters
This is a lesson I'm deriving largely from Reece Martin's excellent Next Metro blog: urbanism goes beyond transit. While I continue to believe (given my experiences, especially here in the Quad Cities) that transit is the pumping lifeblood of cities, it's undeniable that it's not the only thing that contributes to urban feel and urbanist living--and this bracket was likely over-reliant on it. The "amenities" category ended up stretching too far, to include cultural and other quality of life elements, which weren't my original intention but were so important they ended up taking over anyway. A future version of this contest should include more explicit emphasis on those non-transit (and non-housing) elements of urbanism.
Carol 2:
There wasn't really an opportunity to consider the physical design of transit vehicles, so this accordion fold in the articulated buses in Seattle didn't come to play--hence Lesson 3
Lesson 3: Transit Isn't Just About Schedules
Obviously a key element of urban transit is where it goes, how it gets there, and how frequently. But you can't actually evaluate the entirety of a public transit system, much less a city's urbanism, on schedules, or on where and by what mode its transit moves people. Details of the transit beyond that can matter too: like whether the buses, trams, trains, etc. are kept up, or adequate to the services they run. Does your light metro go in a tunnel? Or do you run a particularly unique or meaningfully iconic service? Or, as above, are the articulated trolleybuses a familiar and beloved part of the transit network? These matter to how we understand city transit and city urban design.
Relatedly, I may have emphasized rail over bus too heavily in this bracket. Now, I am actually a believer in bus-based systems; Seattle when I was living there didn't have Link, so all the commutes I describe in my own experience were via bus, and a solid bus system (with good scheduling and routes) can do pretty much everything a city needs. But that may not have fully come through in my analysis here. Some of that is because my practical experience suggests that buses don't actually provide an equal level of service even if they could in theory -- but not all of it, and I could do better.
Carol 3:
One of my favorite places in Seattle to walk by (on the recreational path from which I took this photo) and therefore a good reminder for Lesson 4.
Lesson 4: I Love These Cities
Yes, even the ones that didn't do well. One of the biggest benefits for me (and I hope for you) of this series was the chance to tap into that love and see the best that each city had to offer in terms of urbanism, even if (like say Louisville or Rochester) it wasn't ever going to go far in the competition. The frame was helpful for me in terms of thinking through the good parts of each city--an important exercise for anyone living in a city that isn't magically going to become London overnight.
Every city has its areas or its elements that are attractive for urbanist living, and while the giant sprawling metropolis of London may have won, that doesn't mean you have to be London to do things right. I enjoy visiting and revisiting all of these cities, and I had a good time living in each of them. The Pokemon Go summer found me in Rochester; it may not have great transit or walkability, but it still had enough to make that summer special.
Carol 4:
I really wish I could have fully explained why I love the Seattle Public Library main branch so much, but there wasn't time or space, which leads us to Lesson 5.
Lesson 5: It's Hard to Explain the Mundane
One thing I struggled with in writing up these descriptions was the extent to which my love for these cities comes through things that may seem ordinary or mundane, or at least not particularly exciting. The above Seattle landmark is a good example--the libraries in almost all the cities are places I love visiting, but they don't necessarily differentiate each city from the other, and when they do it's not always easy to explain how or why. The Dewey Decimal Spiral at the Seattle Public Library is amazing, but even pictures or videos don't do it justice.
Even in the cities I tourist in, I do so by wandering about on transit. That can make it hard to explain why a city captivates me, or why it feels urbanist, especially if I didn't happen to take a picture of a particular experience. It's not easy to talk through the ordinary miracles of cities, rather than things like the British Museum or Stanley Park.
Carol 5:
There's just something about these tall towers next to an empty park in Toronto that speaks to me--and to Lesson 6.
Lesson 6: Some Terms Are Hard To Define
I am not saying I think I necessarily did a bad job defining the questions, but there are two sets of comparative questions I struggled with at times: the questions about whether you "can" live your life or get to work without a car, and the ones about how people react to density and to not having a car. The reason for this is that while I think these are actually the fundamental questions of a certain kind of urban living--if the answers are "no" or "negatively," you don't have access to a certain way of life that I value--they are also extremely context dependent. The above picture can help visualize why: these towers are super dense and you could totally live there without a car (there's a transit line underneath). But also they stand out from the surrounding area fairly extremely, which implies that a mile away from this spot the apparent answer to the same questions might be no.
This is where maybe another approach might help: thinking more about what the affordances of the city are (there's some $1000 vocab for you--I mean what it is that the city facilitates and what it makes more difficult) and about the cost of the ideal lifestyle there, rather than a binary yes/no. But of course, a bracket lends itself to yeses and nos, so that may be a structural issue there as well.
Carol 6:
This Pride light-up from Toronto's Village (whose branding is visible in the photo too) was meaningful to me when I saw it, and speaks to Lesson 7 as well.
Lesson 7: Wider Culture Matters Too
Again, this edged its way into some categories by sheer force, but I didn't include anything in the comparison about the larger cultural edifices into which these cities are embedded: the states, the countries, the Western civilization. Can you live life there as a trans person? As a gay person? As a Jew? As an atheist? And so on. And would you want to, or would it corrode you to do it?
These are key questions, and this bracket didn't acknowledge them. London is the home of the new Online Safety Act; does that affect urbanist living there? It must, but how?
Finally, I'll leave you with Carol 7, which is just a picture I really like that encapsulates a certain kind of urbanist living to me, and that I really like.
Carol 7:
Lessons and Carols usually end with Silent Night, and I guess for me, that is the equivalent.
No comments:
Post a Comment