Designing Urban

Transformation
While designers possess the creative capabilities of shaping cities, their
often-singular obsession with form and aesthetics actually reduces
their effectiveness since they are at the mercy of more powerful
generators of urban form. In response to this paradox, Designing Urban
Transformation addresses the incredible potential of urban practice to
radically change cities for the better. The book focuses on a powerful
question, “What can urbanism be?” by arguing that the most significant
transformations occur by fundamentally rethinking concepts, practices,
and outcomes. Drawing inspiration from the philosophical movement
known as Pragmatism, the book proposes three conceptual shifts for
transformative urban practice: beyond material objects: city as flux;
beyond intentions: consequences of design; and beyond practice:
urbanism as creative political act. Pragmatism encourages us to
consider how we can make deeper and more systemic changes and
how urbanism itself can be a design strategy for such transformations.
Analyses of transformative urban initiatives and projects in Barcelona,
Belo Horizonte, Boston, Cairo, Karachi, Los Angeles, New Delhi,
and Paris illuminate how these conceptual shifts operate in vastly
different contexts. The book is a rare integration of theory and practice
that proposes essential ways of rethinking city-design-and-building
processes, while drawing critical lessons from actual examples of such
processes.

Aseem Inam is Director of the Graduate Program in Urban Practice and

Associate Professor of Urbanism at Parsons The New School for Design
in New York City, and Fellow at the Center for Ethics and Transformative
Values at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He has practiced
as an architect, urban designer, and city planner in Canada, France,
Greece, Haiti, India, Morocco, and the United States.
“In this thoughtful, hopeful and truly illuminating book, Aseem Inam combines
a profound critique of urban design theory with a thorough examination of
an impressively global range of projects from Barcelona’s Olympic Village to
Al-Azhar Park in Cairo, from the favelas of Brazil to the villages of India, from the
Pompidou Center to Boston’s Big Dig. Inam draws on his own extensive design
experience and an original reading of Pragmatic philosophy to re-orient urban
design toward social and economic empowerment. Not since Kevin Lynch’s Good
Urban Form has there been a book so constructively critical of conventional
practice and so hopeful for urban design’s proper role and future.”
Robert Fishman, Professor of Architecture and Urban Planning, University of
Michigan.

“Aseem Inam has written a wise and thoughtful challenge to those who believe
in static models of the city, and the developers, politicians and professionals
who hold power over its material form. Insisting on the priority of the public
realm, Inam presents urban design as a broad moral vision rather than a set of
narrow, technical choices. This book is a stunning manifesto for critical global
urbanism in the 21st century.”
Sharon Zukin, author, Naked City: The Death and Life of Authentic Urban Places

“Inam’s excellent treatise vests urban design in its larger socio-political context,
using the lenses of pragmatism to understand its transformative potential.
Instead of looking into the past, the author is more interested in exploring
how urbanism can be a positive force in the ever-changing context of the
contemporary and future 21st century city. Solidly grounded in theory, Inam
expertly makes his message tangible by presenting a series of design initiatives
or “case studies” from different parts of the world. This is a thought-provoking
contribution to the field of urbanism!”
Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris, Professor of Urban Design, University of California
at Los Angeles.

“Though many claim to do so, few books actually succeed in capturing the
symbiosis of urban theory and praxis as convincingly as this. Rich, erudite,
practical and robust, it compels us to reconsider our very relationship with
cities – whether as inhabitants, decision-makers or consumers. It reminds us
that the art of urbanism is a constant negotiation between personal biases and
socio-political realities, and that cities are evolving repositories of complex
decisions, whims and choices, all in constant flux. This outstanding re-evaluation
of contemporary urbanism will serve to expand and enrich the worlds of both
academia and practice.”
Vinayak Bharne, Director of Design, Moule & Polyzoides Architects & Urbanists.

“Drawing on examples ranging in size from a museum to an Olympic village,

and from around the world, Aseem Inam demonstrates how urban design can be
transformative by being more inclusive and more political, and by abandoning
its traditional commitment to a city fixed in time in an ostensibly ideal state.
Simultaneously critical and practical, Inam has made a bold statement.”
Robert Beauregard, Professor of Urban Planning, Columbia University in the City
of New York.
Designing Urban
Transformation
Aseem Inam

Routledge
Taylor & Francis Group
NEW YORK AN D LONDON
First edition published 2014
by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017

and by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

© 2014 Aseem Inam

The right of Aseem Inam to be named as author of this work, has been asserted in
accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in
any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter
invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or
retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered

trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to
infringe.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Inam, Aseem.
Designing urban transformation / By Aseem Inam. -- First edition.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. City planning. 2. Civic improvement. I. Title.
HT166.I535 2013
307.1’216--dc23
2013016614

ISBN13: 978-0-415-83769-9 (hbk)

ISBN13: 978-0-415-83770-5 (pbk)
ISBN13: 978-0-203-72828-4 (ebk)

Typeset in Univers LT Std 9/14 pt by Fakenham Prepress Solutions, Fakenham,

Norfolk NR21 8NN
CONTENTS

Preface............................................................................................................................... vii

1. What Can Urbanism Be?....................................................................................... 1

2. Discovering the Nexus:

Pragmatism, Rural Habitat, and Urbanism............................................ 32

3. Beyond Objects:
City as Flux..................................................................................................................... 60

4. Beyond Intentions:
Consequences of Design....................................................................................112

5. Beyond Practice:
Urbanism as Creative Political Act............................................................. 157

[Link]:
Urbanism as Transformation.......................................................................... 209

Notes................................................................................................................................. 224
Additional References.......................................................................................... 241
Index.................................................................................................................................. 247
This page intentionally left blank
Preface
I have wrestled passionately with the ideas of Designing Urban
Transformation for many years. These ideas were formed, challenged,
tested, and refined through the writing process and will continue to
evolve even after the book is published. Even when I started studying
architecture in college at the age of 16, I combined a keen interest in
design with a perhaps equally keen skepticism of the overly narrow
range of its practice. Further, as a lifelong student of urbanism, I
brainstormed and tested my ideas in classes and studios as a student,
through formal projects and design strategies as a practitioner, through
experimental pedagogies as a professor, through serious theoretical
and empirical research as a scholar, and through firsthand experiences
as a resident and visitor of cities all over the world. These realms of
urban investigation continue to intertwine and enrich each other.

Rather than focusing on how we can make urbanism somewhat better,

or cataloging and imitating so-called best practices, or articulating how
a singular approach such as a focus on sustainability or technology will
supposedly save our cities, this book makes a seemingly simple yet
profound meta-argument: How we think about cities absolutely impacts
how we design them. The most fundamental shifts in transforming cities
do not happen by tinkering around the edges, but by fundamentally

vii
Preface

rethinking processes, methods, and outcomes of urbanism. From this

perspective some readers may view this book as largely theoretical or
even polemical; rather, the philosophy of Pragmatism helps inspire a
framework for crafting this fundamental rethinking, and the ten case
studies of urban interventions demonstrate the different ways and
widely varying contexts in which this new approach can work – all with
extremely impressive results.

This book is the result of a rigorously researched project that begins

with a clear yet thoughtful critique of the ways in which urbanism
is currently conceived and practiced. What follows is a compelling
argument about the conceptual shifts that can transform cities, with
a wide range of built case studies illustrating these shifts. The book is
primarily about the practice of what I call urbanism, and what most
may refer to as that narrowly defined field known as urban design.
Conventional pedagogies and practices of urbanism tend to focus
primarily on the design of cities as the production of static three-
dimensional finished objects such as building complexes, open spaces,
neighborhoods, new towns, and infrastructures. The conceptual shifts
towards city as flux, consequences of design and urbanism as creative
political act – which I develop in the book – are significant because they
lead to practices of critical engagement and urban transformation.

I came to these conceptual ideas and the philosophy of Pragmatism

through my own extensive professional practice. Prior to completing
my Ph.D., I found the actual practice of urbanism to be far more messy
and complicated than anything we were taught at university or anything
that theorists of urbanism were writing. As I demonstrate in the book,
I tested the thinking inspired by Pragmatism in professional projects
(e.g., the Uptown Whittier Specific Plan), pedagogical experiments (e.g.,
the MIT Experimental Design Studio), and through scholarly research
and writing. Ultimately, this book is a marriage of conceptual thinking
derived from Pragmatism and case studies of actual projects from all
over the world. This marriage accomplishes two things: it emphasizes
the significance of the underlying conceptual framework derived
from the philosophy of Pragmatism as a powerful force in rethinking
urbanism for designing transformation, and it illustrates how these
conceptual shifts operate in the vastly different historical, geographical,
and political contexts of cities all over the world.

viii
 Preface

I thought carefully about the selection of these case studies and their
role in furthering research and practice. The reader should keep in mind
that each case study – and for that matter, any case study in any book
– is flawed in one way or another. The point is not to have perfect case
studies; the point is to have case studies that help elucidate and provide
rich detail to conceptual ideas, demonstrate how each conceptual idea
may be carried out in practice in different ways, and provide useful
insights for future practices and projects, which I describe at the end
of every chapter and in the Conclusion. All the case study analyses are
relatively brief in order to elucidate the variety of ways in which the
conceptual ideas may be followed through in projects. For example,
the analysis of the Olympic Village case study in Barcelona highlights
aspects of city as flux. The same case study may be analyzed through
other lenses that would highlight other aspects of the project (e.g.,
as landscape urbanism, or political decision-making, or infrastructure
investment as catalyst, or in terms of only economic impacts). The
chapter on city as flux contains analyses of two other case studies – one
in Cairo and the other in Boston – to illustrate different possibilities
and impacts of operationalizing this concept. The way in which case
studies are framed in this book allows the reader to gain enough critical
knowledge about each initiative, to see how each one illustrates the
proposed conceptual shift, and to gain valuable insights for future
urban practice.

There was also quite a lot of consideration given to the images, which
are essential for the reader to actually see each project. The use of
photos rather than drawings is a deliberate choice that argues for a shift
from the ideas and intentions of projects (as represented by drawings,
models, and computer renderings) to the actual outcomes and
impacts of the designs (as seen in fully built and occupied projects).
Photographs, especially with people in them, convey that one can only
properly assess the quality, strengths and weaknesses, and import of
urbanism after it has been completed, occupied, and experienced in
four dimensions, including the dimension of time. There are far too
many examples of magazines, books, and even awards (such as the
American Institute of Architects’ national urban design awards) that
speak rather superficially about the import of urbanist initiatives in
hypothetical terms that are based primarily on analyses of renderings,
drawings, and plans. In this manner, they fail to acknowledge the

ix
Preface

messy and complicated processes of implementation and, even more

importantly, their after-effects.

What do I hope to accomplish with this book? The conventional fields

that engage most directly with what I call city-design-and-building
processes (the hyphens indicate continuous, evolving, and ongoing
phenomena) such as urban design, architecture, landscape architecture,
and even city planning are involved with one of the most critical tasks
of the 21st century: to imagine the cities of tomorrow, starting with
tomorrow morning. These fields possess many unique strengths: they
are inherently creative, visionary, interdisciplinary, and action-oriented.
Yet, they are also among the most ineffectual fields when it comes
to actually shaping cities in ways that make a genuine difference in
people’s lives. This lacuna derives from an often-singular obsession with
form and space and from a willful indifference to the deeper political
economic structures that actually shape cities. With this book, I hope
to inspire such urbanists to more critically engage with these power
structures so that they can have a genuine impact on the city. I also
hope to offer a much broader view of design and urbanism for activists,
urban scholars, artists, social scientists, policy-makers, and involved
citizens to realize that they too can engage with cities in creative,
visionary, interdisciplinary, and ultimately transformative ways through
the kinds of conceptual rethinking and design strategies described in
this book.

I am deeply grateful to the many individuals who contributed to

the book. Professor Larry Vale, former head of urban studies and
planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Professor
Miodrag Mitrasinovic, former dean of design strategies at Parsons The
New School for Design, saw the value of this research early on and
supported me in many different ways. I benefitted from the valuable
feedback and encouragement regarding the conceptual shifts from
Deepak Bahl, Tony Perez, Konstantina Soureli, David Thacher, and
Ashwani Vasishth. Many generous individuals helped me with the case
study research: Flavio Agostini, Jason Claypool, Surekha Ghogale,
Arif Hasan, Fernando Lara, Markie McBrayer, Junia Naves Nogueira,
Marcio “Bacho” Gibram Silva, and Maher and Laila ElMasry Stino. I
was fortunate to have several excellent research assistants at Parsons
The New School for Design: Namkyu Chun, Matthew DelSesto, Amanda

x
 Preface

Lasnik, Maggie Ollove, and Grace Tuttle. My good friend and fellow
practicing urbanist, Vinayak Bharne, played a special role through his
constant encouragement and hours of fruitful debate and discussion. At
Routledge publishing, I have been fortunate to work with an extremely
supportive team, especially Nicole Solano, Acquisitions Editor, Fritz
Brantley, Senior Editorial Assistant, and Alex Hollingsworth, Senior
Publisher.

The book is dedicated to my incredibly loving and supportive family:

my parents, Ambassador Inam Rahman and Mira Rahman, my late
brother, Amar Inam, and my younger brother, Arun Inam. I am who
I am because of their unwavering love and their faith in my deepest
beliefs.

Aseem Inam
April 8, 2013
New York City

xi
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1
What Can Urbanism Be?

Power of Language

Designing Urban Transformation is about the incredible potential

of urban design practice to radically change cities for the better. I
deliberately choose to use the term “urbanism” rather than “urban
design,” because conventional urban design has an overly narrow
and limiting connotation in pedagogy and practice as essentially
architecture on a larger scale, with its attendant obsessions with
aesthetics and three-dimensional objects. Conventional urban design
largely overlooks the deeper structures and dynamics that actually
shape cities. This book proposes multiple shifts in thinking and
practice to render urbanism far more effective than currently practiced,
beginning with the power of language.

Throughout the book, I use the following terms with their respective
definitions:

• City: metropolitan area or urbanized region, as in “The city

will continue to be a concentration of people, activities, and
structures, and their interrelationships.”

• Material city: built environment and physical form of the city, as

in “The transformative potential of the city lies at the nexus of
the material and the immaterial.”

1
What Can Urbanism Be?

• Urbanism: city-design-and-building processes, and their

spatial products, as in “Urbanism is as much about designing
processes of social and political empowerment, as it is about
designing systems and structures.”

• Urbanists: practitioners who engage in willful, creative, and

daily acts of designing and building cities, including – but not
limited to – more conventional professionals such as urban
designers, city planners, architects, and landscape architects, as
in “Urbanists engage in multiple modes of practice in order to
shape cities.”

• Transformation: significant and fundamental positive change, as

in “The fundamental task of urbanism should be to transform
cities.”

Thus, I define urbanism from the perspective of design and practice as

ongoing city-design-and-building processes and their spatial products.

A significant portion of this introductory chapter is devoted to a critical

analysis of the state of the art of urbanism, including a review of
the major publications that have influenced both thinking and actual
practice in recent decades. The chapter outlines major ways of thinking
by drawing from a wide range of literature, without claiming to be
exhaustive or comprehensive.1 Instead, I draw from recent influential
publications to touch upon and analyze the dominant strands of
thought in contemporary urbanism. I then argue for a theoretically
robust, radically altered, and truly future-oriented idea: “What can
urbanism be?” is a question I have been investigating through reflective
practice, interrogative research, and experimental pedagogy for several
years.2 The question: “What is urban design?” focuses on the present,
and thus emphasizes the status quo while confining itself to narrowly
defined and uncritically accepted notions about the design and building
of cities. “What can urbanism be?,” based on my rethinking of the
field, is more problematic and potentially transformative, since it
plunges headlong into unfamiliar territory and challenges fundamental
assumptions. I began this chapter by discussing the power of language,
and proposing a shift in language to reflect a more sophisticated and
more powerful understanding of cities, their ongoing design-and-
building processes, spatial products and their impacts.

2
 What Can Urbanism Be?

This use of language gets to a critical shift in thinking: it is no longer a

viable project to tweak the edges of a relatively narrow, benign, and,
I would argue, ineffective, conception of a field. Urban challenges
and crises of the 21st century demand that we more fully explore the
enormous potential and possibilities of an urbanism that designs and
builds cities in transformative ways. As will be seen throughout this
book, I use the word design in both broader (e.g., to encompass the
design of processes, policies, and institutions) and deeper ways (e.g.,
immersive in its context and impactful on the city). Before delving
further into these ideas, I now provide an outline of the state of the art
of the field by describing current urban conditions, their significance,
and current thinking as well as practices.

Why Urbanism Matters

While the significance of cities is well known to urbanists and scholars,

it does bear revisiting. In economic terms, 600 cities will soon
generate about 60 percent of global gross domestic product, making
them significant economic actors in the global economy.3 In terms of
demographics, over 50 percent of the world’s population is urban and
80 percent of countries as diverse as Argentina, Saudi Arabia, and
the United Kingdom live in cities, with millions more expected to live
in some of the largest and fastest growing cities in Africa, Asia, and
Latin America. By 2030 the urban population is expected to approach
5 billion while the rural population will continue to decline. Indeed, the
next few decades will see an unprecedented scale of urban growth in
the developing regions of the world along with the challenges that this
circumstance entails.4

In the year 2020, the five largest cities will be Tokyo with 37 million
people, Mumbai with 26 million, Delhi with 26 million, Dhaka with
22 million, and Mexico City with 22 million.5 These are cities of
unprecedented size with their attendant challenges of designing and
managing housing and infrastructure for such scales and densities
of populations. Apart from sheer size, the speed of urbanization is
also rapid, albeit in smaller cities. From 2006 to 2020, the five fastest
growing cities in the world will be Beihai, China, growing at an average
annual growth rate of 11 percent, Ghaziabad, India at 5 percent, Sana’a,

3
What Can Urbanism Be?

Yemen at 5 percent, Surat, India at 5 percent, and Kabul, Afghanistan at

5 percent.6 Such trends represent enormous challenges – and creative
opportunities – for urbanists.

There is an equally compelling and yet more nuanced argument to

be made for the criticality of urbanism. Cities are significant as the
locus of people’s direct engagement with the material reality of the
everyday world and their perceived meaning of social realities via the
symbolism of urban artifacts. Even as the city is considered by theorists
to be increasingly dominated by the amorphous and expanding
spaces of urban networks, citizens “experience their globally situated
and connected urban space as decidedly local lifeworlds, thick with
specific experiences, practices, imaginations, and memories.”7 In these
experiences, the material city reflects the identities of class and culture,
and demonstrates the interests of the state in social order and the
private sector in stimulating consumption.8

Moreover, the material city is not simply a straightforward mirror or

neutral container; rather, it is a continuous process, a socio-spatial
dialectic.9 In this dialectic, people create and modify urban spaces
while being conditioned by the spaces in which they live, work, and
visit. As cities are produced and reproduced, the attitudes and behavior
of inhabitants are influenced by their surroundings as well as by the
values, attitudes, and behavior of the people around them. At the same
time, ongoing processes of urbanization and transformation establish a
context of change in which economic, political, and social dynamics are
continuously interacting with these urban spaces. In this manner, the
material city is both structured and structuring.

The material city not only reflects the underlying structures of society,
it also serves as one of the means through which these structures are
sustained and legitimized. At a fundamental level, how primacies for
urban interventions are established, how scarce resources are allocated,
and how cities are designed by urbanists and others all reflect the
values and priorities of those in power. In other words, power designs
cities.10 One of the most blatant forms of power in the material city is
the control of land, such as when single entities like the government
or a private developer owns, designs, and develops vast tracts of land
more or less as it so chooses. The material city also contains multiple

4
 What Can Urbanism Be?

and often more subtle mechanisms and expressions of power, for

example, expressed via decisions as to which areas of the material city
will receive attention and resources, and which will not. Thus, cities
represent not only the mediation of the everyday world for citizens, but
also the means through which power structures are reproduced.

Conceptual Shift: From Urban Design to

Urbanism
So what exactly is urban design? The question has been asked multiple
times and many continue to wrestle with it. However, I believe that it is
not a very useful question to ask. First of all, such a question focuses
immediately on a narrowly defined answer that rests on the status quo.
The framing of the question as “What is … ?” suggests a complacency
with the existing way of thinking and, in the case of urban design,
satisfaction with precise professional definitions that may nonetheless be
exceedingly limited in their scope. Second, the term urban design carries
with it baggage that I referred to at the beginning of the chapter. One is
the claim, widely accepted by many, that the Dean of Harvard University’s
Graduate School of Design in 1953, Jose Lluis Sert, named and developed
the discipline of urban design through a series of conferences.11 There are
two problems with this claim.12 One is that what Sert actually named was
a particular form of architectural project design and capitalist development
in the aftermath of World War II. The second and much more significant
problem is that urban design has a millennia-old tradition pre-dating
the cities of Europe and the United States, and no claim of authorship
can be made on it. The second piece of baggage that the term urban
design carries with it is that it has long been dominated by architects and
architectural thinking, which is ultimately about three-dimensional form.
No matter the challenge, such as homelessness, disaster recovery, or a
lack of clean water, in this type of thinking the solution is almost always
a set of three-dimensional objects (e.g., homeless shelters, modular
prefabricated housing, water treatment plant, etc.). While the material
city is indeed a critical facet of our world, the primacy of the three-
dimensional object tends to overlook other strategies, such as public
policy, resource management, community mobilization, or more
democratic power structures, which might actually lead to the deeper
structural changes needed to truly improve cities.

5
What Can Urbanism Be?

There are other ways of thinking about the field conventionally known
as urban design, which I problematize in this book by broadening and
deepening, and calling a newly defined field “urbanism” that I defined
at the beginning of this chapter. These ways include morphological
definitions, as a default focus, as the keeper of the public realm,
through lists of categories, as a map of bodies of knowledge, as
a field of research, as different modes of practice, via models for
understanding and making cities, and practical “how-to” approaches
such as best practices. I describe each of these nine ways briefly in the
following sections.

A morphological definition of urbanism relies on describing the

structure of the field, usually in terms of other fields. Such morphology
includes a combination of architecture, landscape architecture, city
planning, or, as a bridge to fill a gap: “Urban design falls between
the professions of planning and architecture. It deals with large scale
organization and design of the city, with the massing and organization
of buildings and the spaces between them, but not with the design of
the individual buildings.”13 Similarly, other definitions include not only
planning and architecture, but public policy as well: “urban design
is the discipline between planning and architecture. It gives three-
dimensional physical form to policies described in a comprehensive
plan. It focuses on the design of the public realm, which is created by
both public spaces and the buildings that define them.”14 The challenge
with such approaches is two-fold: to describe a field in terms of other
fields leaves out a deeper examination and understanding of the
inherent nature of that field, and it justifies its existence as some sort of
bridge rather than what its own purpose is. Thus, a teleological question
such as “What purpose does urbanism serve?” is a question that is far
more rife with potential than the morphological perspective of “What
combinations of fields does urbanism consist of?”

A second common way of thinking about urbanism and the material

city is through a focus on the formal qualities of the city by default
rather than forethought. In other words, it has supposedly “developed
as a result of a need to address problems that other professionals and
laypeople were not addressing.”15 If the typical morphological approach
is about overlaps or combinations of fields, then the default approach is
about filling the gaps between fields. Such a view, however, posits a

6
 What Can Urbanism Be?

weak position for urbanism and hands responsibility for envisioning the
city to a multitude of other fields and stakeholders.

Following from the default focus approach on urban form is a related

yet distinct third approach that posits a concern with the public realm,
which is, according to Denise Scott Brown, “the public sector seen
in physical terms. We may view the public realm simple-mindedly as
everything on the transportation map [of streets and public transits]
and everything that is blue [institutional uses] and green [i.e., open
spaces] on the city land use map.”16 Even in this perspective, there is a
more nuanced understanding of the public realm in which all buildings
have their public aspects, such as the lobby of a museum, and there is
differentiation between the civic design of institutional and ceremonial
aspects and public places such as shopping malls and beaches,
even within the public realm. While such designers’ perspectives are
well-meaning, they remain naïve and superficial, since they overlook
or misunderstand the crucial legal and financial aspects of the public
realm.

The public realm, especially open space, is in fact very much

about control, usually through legal means and police or security
enforcement. There is the well-studied phenomenon of privately owned
public space in the United States such as the plazas of Manhattan, but
there are multitudinous examples from around the world, including the
fascinating and inspiring activities of Tahrir Square during the so-called
Arab Spring movement in 2011.17 As these examples illustrate, this
perspective suggests that a

central concern of [urbanists] is with the concept of the public

realm and how this is constituted in practice. It is the space
where use-values predominate and people lead their daily lives.
Capital views the so-called public realm as a barrier to capital
accumulation, a space for social purposes that might better be used
for development … So at a fundamental level the public realm can
be viewed as a space of conflict, one where civil society struggles
to retain a significant urban presence and in the process erects
barriers to further accumulation from land development.18

7
What Can Urbanism Be?

More than a focus on public space, there is great potential in

urbanism’s healthy obsession with the public realm, which would
transcend the materiality of space and place into the power structures
and decision-making processes that shape cities.

Given the rapidly changing and increasingly complex nature of cities,

scholars and practitioners have proposed yet another approach to
describing urbanism: producing lists of categories of types of urbanism
and realms of urbanist actions. In 2011, Jonathan Barnett, director
of the urban design program at the University of Pennsylvania and
a distinguished urban practitioner, published an article in Planning
magazine called “A Short Guide to Sixty of the Newest Urbanisms.”
Barnett was director of the pioneering Urban Design Group in New
York City. He has published a number of books on topics such as the
fractured metropolis, planning for a new century, and rebuilding urban
places after disasters, and has worked on projects in the United States,
Cambodia, and China. Thus, Barnett is not only a highly influential
figure in the field of urbanism, but also an excellent barometer of its
trends and fluctuations.

Barnett’s article describes the sixty supposedly different types of

urbanism that are prevalent. He briefly describes a long list of
supposedly different types of urbanism, such as ecological urbanism,
landscape urbanism, New Urbanism, tactical urbanism, infrastructural
urbanism, informal urbanism, and sub-urbanism. Sensing this
somehow as an appropriate way of understanding the field, others
continue to add to this list of sixty types, with descriptions of slow
urbanism and integral urbanism. For example, Barnett writes:

Emergent Urbanism is an expectation that the form of cites should

be generated by a system of rules followed by independent actors,
each performing tasks for its own purposes, much as a beehive or
ant colony emerges from the actions of its participants. Sim City,
the computer game devised by Will Wright, is a simplified example
of an emerging city. It has a rule system familiar to planners, as it is
comparable to zoning, subdivision, and capital budgeting.19

However, all cities have some type of system of formal (e.g., written
regulations) and informal rules (e.g., social norms), even ancient ones

8
 What Can Urbanism Be?

such as Islamic cities.20 In fact, all cities need larger mechanisms to

coordinate standards of urbanism and to ensure a certain degree of
quality in the design of the material city. Thus, emergent urbanism has
considerable overlap with New Urbanism and all other urbanisms that
seek a city-wide systemic impact. Moreover, this approach to urbanism
highlights the continuing movement towards fragmentation in the field,
which encourages increasing specialization and professionalization
rather than the engagement with the dynamic on-the-ground urban
processes and outcomes that do not fit neatly into any particular
category.

Alex Krieger, former head of the urban design program at Harvard

University and a founding principal of Chan Krieger Sieniewicz (an
award-winning architecture and urbanism firm based in Cambridge,
Massachusetts), defines urbanism in language similar to Barnett.
Krieger has published several books, such as Towns and Town Planning
Principles and A Design Primer for Towns and Cities, and has held
a number of influential positions, including director of the Mayor’s
Institute in City Design and member of the Boston Civic Design
Commission. Thus, he too is an influential figure in the pedagogy and
practice of urbanism. Krieger lists ten different spheres of urbanist
action in a recent and widely publicized book on urban design: the
bridge connecting planning and architecture, a form-based category of
public policy, the architecture of the city, urban design as restorative
urbanism, urban design as an art of place-making, urban design as
smart growth, the infrastructure of the city, urban design as landscape
urbanism, urban design as visionary urbanism, and urban design as
community advocacy.21 Like Barnett, Krieger presents his list in an
uncritical manner and readily admits that other activities could be
added to this list. The problems with the list approach to urbanism is
that it is based on the premise that for virtually every situation (e.g.,
informal settlements) and every challenge (e.g., aging infrastructure),
there is a new and different urbanism.

In a similar vein to lists of categories of types of urbanism are

efforts to comprehensively map bodies of knowledge to address a
critical question: What do urbanists need to know? The scholar Anne
Moudon published the pioneering approach towards capturing the
breathtaking scope of urbanism as overlapping bodies of knowledge by

9
What Can Urbanism Be?

introducing an organizing framework for research and practice. 22 She

describes the framework as “catholic” in the sense of drawing from
a variety of disciplines: history, sociology, psychology, anthropology,
geography, architecture, landscape architecture, and urban planning,
and from a wide range of methodological approaches (e.g., historical
analysis, direct observation of human behavior through photography,
quantitative data analysis, etc.). She describes two types of knowledge
in urbanism: substantive or descriptive knowledge (e.g., understanding
what or why a city or part of a city is), versus normative or prescriptive
knowledge (e.g., emphasizing what should be). Nine areas serve to scan
what is known about how cities are made, used, and understood, and
to focus on ways of developing this knowledge: urban history studies,
picturesque studies, image studies, environment behavior studies,
place studies, material culture studies, typology-morphology studies,
space-morphology studies, and nature-ecology studies. The challenge
for the practitioner is to integrate these almost overwhelming areas of
knowledge in purposeful and meaningful ways.

Within the spirit of Moudon’s mapping approach there has been a

spate of books, or readers, which compile what many consider to be
classic writings in urbanism along with newer thinking. These readers
are also welcome, since they reflect a recent surge of interest in
urbanism as well as a broadening of its understanding. As an example,
Writing Urbanism: A Design Reader is divided into three parts: urban
process, urban form, and urban society. Each of these parts is further
subdivided; for example, urban process consists of observations,
preservation, reuse and sustainability, and community, urban form
consists of everyday urbanism, new urbanism, and post-urbanism,
while urban society is subdivided into the public realm, globalism and
local identity, and technology.23 The central question of such readers
is what is their purpose and what is their contribution. The editors of
Writing Urbanism admit the limited scope and contribution of their
reader by stating that many of the chapters are drawn from the Journal
of Architectural Education and the conference proceedings of the
Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture, thus reverting to the
fairly narrow and outdated architectural perspective on cities.

A more recent reader, Companion to Urban Design, demonstrates

greater promise with regard to the future of urbanism.24 There are fifty

10
 What Can Urbanism Be?

new and specially commissioned chapters for the book, thus reflecting
a greater possibility of fresh rethinking of the field. The chapters attempt
to address truly critical questions such as: What are the lingering
debates, conflicts, and contradictions in the theory and practice
of urbanism? How could urbanism respond to the contemporary
challenges of climate change, sustainability, active living initiatives,
globalization, and the like? The thoughtful and provocative nature of
the chapters was confirmed at a public symposium at Parsons The New
School for Design in New York City in 2011 that led to considerable
discussion and debate. In particular, a panel on the future city that was
derived from the reader focused on citizen participation, smart growth,
and ethnoscapes provoked a lively and useful discussion.25 Still,
what the Companion to Urban Design shares with its brethren is an
overwhelming focus on “what is” rather than “what can be” or “what
should be” – which would be a more fruitful approach towards urban
transformation.

Compared to more established fields in the social sciences such as

economics or politics, or even professions such as architecture and city
planning, urbanism is a relatively young field from the perspective of
design, practice, and research. Since urbanism as a field of research is
relatively unformed, this is an opportunity for practitioner-scholars to
continue interrogating and revisiting it. The leading scholarly English-
language journal of urbanism is the Journal of Urban Design, which
consistently publishes peer-reviewed research. In the inaugural issue
published almost twenty years ago, the editors celebrate urbanism as a
“re-emergent discipline,” while nonetheless falling back on the familiar
morphological definition as “the interface of … architecture, town
planning, landscape architecture, surveying, property development,
environmental management and protection.”26 Still, the journal has
published a number of articles that continue to gradually nudge
urbanism in new and different directions. A recent article argues that
thinking for urbanism must embrace the awkward nature of design
problems and the interpretive and political nature of how we come
to judge built form solutions, and that research for urbanism might
therefore embrace methods and practices employed in the arts and
humanities just as legitimately as those adopted in the social sciences.27
My article in the journal interrogates the conventional dichotomy
between theory and practice via an urbanism studio I designed and

11
What Can Urbanism Be?

conducted at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The studio

created a highly reflective and adaptable framework for a theory/
practice dialective in urbanism in which the focus is on testing existing
theories and creating new ones out of reflective practice.28

Also in the Journal of Urban Design, urbanist and scholar Ann Forsyth
asks a critical question regarding the relationship between research and
urbanism: In a world of design solutions, how important is research
to innovation?29 Her answer is that with their direct connections to
tangible issues and their location within multiple conventionally
defined professions, urbanists could be exemplars of interdisciplinary
work, serving as the human face of the research turn while expanding
and deepening their own body of knowledge. She then identifies six
domains of innovation in urbanism:

1 Style (built work or sustained illustrations that change the

formal character of urbanism).

2 Project types (creates new urban types).

3 Process and engagement (develops new processes or modes of

public engagement).

4 Formal/functional analysis and representation (involves new

techniques for understanding and representing space).

5 Ethical, social, and cultural analysis (highlights issues of the good).

6 Innovations in collaboration with other fields (interdisciplinary

research and prototype projects).

Even within these domains, the vast majority of research tends to

accept the conventional definitions of the field, thus limiting the impact
the practice of urbanism can actually have upon the city. The challenge
remains to conduct research that asks deeper questions and swims in
more troubled waters, for example, by addressing the multiple facets
of a truly meaningful question such as “Why do we need the field of
urbanism?”

Urbanism is also defined as a group of varying modes of professional

practice. In recent years, Douglas Kelbaugh has made the most

12
 What Can Urbanism Be?

distinct claims about this approach, emphasizing three contemporary

and self-conscious paradigms of practice: New Urbanism, Everyday
Urbanism, and, to a lesser extent, Post-Urbanism.30 New Urbanism
is the best known and most organized of these paradigms via the
Congress for the New Urbanism, which promotes a model inspired by
the past that is a compact, mixed-use, diverse, transit-friendly, walkable
city with a hierarchy of buildings and places that promote face-to-face
social interaction. Everyday Urbanism has a body of literature and
a clearly stated goal: to celebrate and build on ordinary life with
elements that remain elusive: ephemerality, cacophony, multiplicity,
and simultaneity. In its embrace of dynamic global information and
capital flows, Post-Urbanism is critical of most traditional norms
and conventions using bold form – whether broken and fractal or
continuous and flowing – and is relativistic, predictably unpredictable,
and without formal orthodoxies or principles. According to Kelbaugh,
these three approaches or attitudes represent the cutting edge of
theoretical and professional activity in Western architecture and
urbanism. He argues for an integrated approach to urbanism, with
New Urbanism representing the most responsible middle path, with
some reservations. In terms of the arguments I pursue in this book,
New Urbanism shows greater promise by engaging with and directly
challenging the more fundamental generators of the material city such
as land use regulations (e.g., redesigning zoning) and the real estate
development industry (e.g., financing mixed-use developments).

A growing realm for understanding, and especially practicing, urbanism

is in the use of models. Most recently, physicists have attempted to
utilize extremely large sets of data and statistics to create models of
correlations for cities, and claim that many urban variables could be
described by a few simple equations. For example, Geoffrey West
and his colleagues at the Santa Fe Institute say that if they know the
population of a metropolitan area in a given country, they can estimate,
with approximately 85 percent accuracy, its average income and the
dimensions of its sewer system.31 These are supposedly the laws that
automatically emerge whenever people agglomerate in cities, and the
urban patterns remain the same without regard to history, geography,
or power structures. While there are economies of scale and qualities
of social interaction that emerge in the higher densities of cities, it is
not clear how such supposedly universalistic models of cities account

13
What Can Urbanism Be?

for the often messy and complicated decision-making that shapes cities
in democracies, which are also subject to the vagaries of economic
conditions or cultural nuances.

A more fine-grained approach to analysis and modeling consists of

attempts to quantify the material city. There has been substantial
progress made in the ability to measure and analyze spatial forms that
help characterize urban form, ranging from patterns of land use at the
regional scale to the walkability of areas at the neighborhood scale.
In terms of quantitative analysis, there are five major categories of
perspectives on the formal qualities of the material city:32

1 Landscape ecology, in which the principal concern is

environmental protection and the nature of data is land cover.

2 Economic structure, with economic efficiency as the principal

concern and employment and population as the primary types
of data.

3 Transportation planning, in which accessibility is the principal

concern and the nature of data is employment, population, and
transportation networks.

4 Community design, with social welfare as the primary concern

and local geographic information system (GIS) data as the
primary types of data.

5 Urban design, in which aesthetics and walkability are the

principal concerns and the nature of data is images, surveys,
and audits.

A thorough review of this research suggests that substantial progress

has been made in the ability to measure and analyze spatial patterns,
and that strategies and policies that engage the material city have to be
crafted at multiple scales to address the often disparate issues that arise
at each scale.

Modeling may also be the basis for urban practice. In his book
Recombinant Urbanism, Grahame Shane describes the influence of
conceptual models in city-design-and-building processes: “A city model
enables a designer to construct an understanding of the city and its

14
 What Can Urbanism Be?

component elements, facilitating design decisions. It orients urban

actors in complex situations and at multiple scales.”33 Shane then
proposes his own model which consists of three basic urban elements:
armature, enclave, and heterotopia.34 An armature is a linear element
that links the sub-elements of the city to bring people together in an
axial space to form relationships (e.g., street, outdoor mall, perspectival
axis). An enclave is a self-organizing, self-centering, and self-regulating
system created by urban actors, often governed by a rigid hierarchy
with set boundaries (e.g., neighborhoods, districts, precincts). A
heterotopia houses all exceptions to the dominant city model by
being a place that mixes the stasis of the enclave with the flow of
an armature and in which the balance between these two systems is
always changing (e.g., the former walled city of Kowloon in Hong Kong,
Rockefeller Center in New York). These elements come together via
recombinant urbanism, which is “urban splicing, analogously to genetic
recombination [that] involves the sorting, layering, overlapping, and
combining of disparate elements to create new combinations.”35

In a subsequent book, Urban Design Since 1945, Shane returns

to this conceptual model of recombinant urbanism by placing it
within the larger context of city-design-and-building processes. The
three elements of the model – armature, enclave, and heterotopia –
combine and recombine in different ways to produce four different
types of contemporary city: European metropolis, Asian megacity,
megalopolis, and metacity. The origins of the European metropolis
are the large European capital cities after World War II, such as Berlin,
Brussels, London, Madrid, Paris, Rome, and Vienna, which served
as metropolitan capitals of 19th-century global empires. The Asian
megacity is represented by contemporary cities of larger than 20
million in population, and that represent 8 percent of the world’s
urban population, including Delhi, Jakarta, Kolkata, Manila, Mumbai,
Shanghai, and Seoul.36 A third city type, the megalopolis, is a city based
on a new distribution system and energy source, oil and petroleum,
that sprawls beyond the confines of the metropolis and has no single
center.37 The term was first coined by the French geographer Jean
Gottmann in 1961 to describe the urban agglomeration stretching
from Boston to Washington, DC. The metacity, whose terminology may
be traced to the Dutch architecture firm MVRDV, goes hand-in-hand
with the concept of the megacity, since it refers to the city as bundles

15
What Can Urbanism Be?

of statistical information that are deployed to better understand the

enormous size and complexity of contemporary cities. The key to
understanding and deploying such models is to critically assess the
underlying implicit and explicit assumptions, many of which may be
based on outdated or overly rigid thinking.

There is also the more hands-on “how-to” approach, as reflected in a

spate of recent books which focus on best practices and case studies,
and the lessons that may be derived from them. The books, such as
Urban Design for an Urban Century: Placemaking for People and The
American City: What Works, What Doesn’t, feature numerous projects
and case studies of urbanism.38 The case studies range from projects
in downtowns, residential neighborhoods, waterfronts, and parks, to
monumental public structures (e.g., libraries, museums, and convention
centers), and large-scale redevelopment projects. However, the case
studies tend to be largely descriptive, with little critical analysis, let
alone the deeper theoretical insights that could lead to significant shifts
in the field.

Manuals such as Getting to Smart Growth II: 100 More Policies for
Implementation are particularly promising, for three reasons. First, its
recommendations include strategies regarding the form of the material
city that are by now quite familiar, such as to mix land uses and create
walkable communities, but also broader policy pursuits, including
making development decisions predictable, fair, and cost effective, and
encouraging community and stakeholder collaboration in development
decisions. Second, it describes precisely how such strategies might be
rendered concrete and feasible; for example, one can create walkable
communities in ten different ways, including using trees and other
green infrastructure to provide shelter, beauty, urban heat reduction,
and separation from automobile traffic, and/or situate parking to
enhance the pedestrian environment and facilitate access between
destinations. We implemented some of these creative strategies – via a
highly transparent and participatory process – to develop a much more
human and pedestrian-friendly city in the Uptown Whittier Specific
Plan case study, which is analyzed in Chapter 5. Third, the manual helps
make a certain degree of urban transformation possible by ensuring
that these ideas and strategies are much more accessible – by making
the publication free and easy to obtain via the internet and the writing

16
 What Can Urbanism Be?

easy to understand. Such simple techniques are often overlooked by

urban theorists and scholars.

By far the most formidable of the “how-to” books is A Pattern

Language: Towns • Buildings • Construction by Christopher Alexander,
an architect and scholar with a background in chemistry, physics,
mathematics, transportation theory, computer science, and cognitive
studies.39 The book is part of a trio, with The Timeless Way of Building
providing the theoretical background and The Oregon Experiment
showing how the ideas may be implemented. A Pattern Language
is a masterful exposition of problems that occur repeatedly in our
environment (e.g., poorly designed public space) and the core solutions
that may be repeated and adapted to different circumstances (e.g., a
courtyard as an outdoor room). What makes these patterns particularly
compelling is that the design strategies are evidence-based rather than
idiosyncratic, drawing from decades of scholarly research and visceral
experience. Moreover, the patterns are presented in a highly accessible
manner for a broad audience, with simple and easy-to-understand text,
diagrams, and photographs. For this and other reasons, the book has
been unfairly ignored and even ostracized by scholars and practitioners
in architecture, but has been highly influential in other fields such as
computer science for its notion of archetypal patterns.

A variation of the “how-to” approach to urbanism is the best

practices approach, most vividly illustrated by awards and published
compilations. The most global in scope of the best practice awards is
the Dubai International Award for Best Practices established in 1995 and
administered by UN HABITAT – the United Nations Human Settlements
Programme.40 Every two years, twelve submissions are awarded
as winners and over 100 are recognized as best practices for their
innovative ways of dealing with the common social, economic, and
environmental problems. Since its establishment, over 4,000 practices
from 140 countries have been received, compiled, and disseminated
through a best practices database. In the United States, an awards
program that has the reputation of highlighting humanist examples
of urbanism through a rigorous selection process is the Rudy Bruner
Award for Urban Excellence, created in 1986. Like the Dubai Award,
the Bruner Award considers urban form as only one aspect of an
excellent urban place, which rather “involves the interplay of process,

17
What Can Urbanism Be?

place and values … [and] seeks to illuminate the complex process of

urban placemaking, so that it may be strengthened to better reflect
the balance between form and use; opportunity and cost; preservation
and change.”41 The Bruner Award carefully documents the award
recipients and makes the publications available free on its website.
Even with the impressive scope of these awards and provision of easy
access to databases of award winners, there is no documented study
of how these award programs might lead to the large-scale, systemic
transformation of cities.

There are, however, an increasing number of scholarly studies that

attempt to identify and analyze so-called best practices and to distill
insights and lessons from them for wider adaptation and use. An
example of a process- and policy-oriented analysis of best practices
in urbanism is the work of scholar John Punter on deriving such
principles from studies of urban planning and regulatory systems in
Australia, Canada, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Singapore, Spain,
Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States.42 Recalling the
recommendations of the American publication described in an earlier
section of this chapter, Getting to Smart Growth II, Punter derives four
groups of principles of a more effective design review of urbanism
projects:

1 How the community might advance a vision, and the local

authority a corporate program, to develop a strategic role for
urbanists and provide the context for the exercise of design
review.

2 How planning, zoning, housing, and fiscal instruments might

be harnessed to help develop a comprehensive and coherent
approach to design review and deliver better designed projects.

3 What types of substantive urbanism principles might underpin

design policy, guidance and intervention.

4 What types of review processes might be adopted to ensure

fairness, efficiency, and effectiveness within the decision-
making process.

18
 What Can Urbanism Be?

These sets of principles provide a basis for evaluating, reforming, or

developing review processes. However, they can also play a wider role
in developing urban design as public policy, stressing both its strategic
and localized role, bringing all stakeholders into a closer relationship,
and utilizing the full range of design and planning instruments to
achieve more democratic and effective development management
processes – which is in the spirit of the kinds of deeper transformations
that this book proposes.

Several of the approaches towards urbanism described thus far (e.g.,

lists of types of urbanism, bodies of relevant knowledge, books that
compile canonical writings, “how-to manuals,” best practices awards
and publications) are reminiscent of mapping exercises in which a
field is visually diagrammed to capture its scope. What these exercises
share is a descriptive – and, it should be added, always tentative –
capture of exemplary bodies of knowledge and exemplary forms of
practice. Such exercises also raise deeper questions: What are the
assumptions that underlie the selection of these exemplary forms
of thinking and acting? What are the overall patterns that emerge of
these examples, and why? Moreover, in light of the complexity
of contemporary social and physical urban structures, urbanism is
becoming not only more fragmented but also increasingly irrelevant,
unless it learns to challenge basic assumptions, engage in deeper
modes of inquiry, and generate more systemic forms of strategic
interventions. There is indeed one realm that is intended to examine
underlying assumptions and systemic patterns of thought and action:
theory, to which we turn next.

Rebuilding Foundations: Theorizing Urbanism

Conventional notions of urbanism – including many of the nine

approaches described in the previous sections – still tend to be
moored to the architectural ways of thinking about the city as a three-
dimensional object, with its attendant and entirely understandable
obsessions with form, aesthetics, space, and materiality. This
understanding is gradually broadening, but is still not engaged enough
with practice, or how urbanism actually occurs, which should be at
the heart of the design perspective. At the same time, urbanism is at

19
What Can Urbanism Be?

its foundation an intellectual activity; that is, the practice of urbanism

demonstrates a capacity for understanding and knowledge as well
as the ability to think abstractly in order to continue exploring its full
potential. Theories of urbanism offer a set of general directions that
may be translated into specific design strategies depending on the
context, while at the same time establishing criteria to evaluate existing
places without demanding that all cities reach these criteria in the same
way.

A common critique of theories of design and urbanism is that they

tend to be far too utopian to be truly operational in terms of helping
to suggest concrete strategies and next steps. Thus, one challenge for
theory is not to be so abstract as to be far too difficult to translate into
practice (e.g., as some practitioners have found with the work of urban
theorist Ed Soja), while to be not too narrow and prescriptive (e.g., as
critics claim to find the work of New Urbanists to be too formulaic).
Many contemporary design theories achieve clarity by focusing on only
one or two aspects of city building. For example, parametric urbanism
claims to be a new style of urban form using the cutting-edge techniques
of computer simulation, simulation, and form-finding tools, as well as
parametric modeling and scripting.43 Another example is landscape
urbanism, which describes a disciplinary realignment in which landscape
replaces architecture as the basic building block of cities.44 While the
former chooses almost exclusively to focus on the relationship between
technology and form, the latter devotes most of its attention to natural
elements such as topography, vegetation, and water. While both of these
theories introduce crucial elements into the conceptual discourse on
the contemporary city, they also neglect other important facets, such as
ways of enabling less privileged residents to reach vital resources and
enabling residents to have a greater say in the future of their city.

In this book, I point to particular types of theory as being essential

to an urbanism that addresses its myriad challenges, fulfills its true
potential, and transforms cities. Theory is a systematically organized
knowledge applicable in a wide variety of circumstances and devised to
explain, analyze, or predict a specified set of phenomena. At its fullest
expression, theory represents a generalized abstraction of observations
which serves as a guide to strategy and action.45 The argument is
based on the premise that the most powerful means we have for the

20
 What Can Urbanism Be?

design of cities is our imagination. The potency of theory is based on

the premise that ideas are powerful agents of change. How we think
about cities matters a great deal. Furthermore, at its best – as this
book demonstrates – urbanism can embody a unification of theory and
practice.

Some of the most recent attempts at rethinking theories of urbanism

include an approach which seeks to reintegrate the human experience
of the material city in the face of real estate markets that treat land
and buildings as discrete commodities.46 Another approach argues that
the dialectical positioning of urbanism between science and design
suggests its preference for low theory, which is contingent, nuanced,
and incomplete (rather than high theory, which prefers certitude and
law-like propositions).47 While each of these approaches offers valuable
insights into the nature of the field, neither quite manages to engage
with urbanism as a conceptualization of on-the-ground reality, or as
a practice, or to integrate theory and practice in a manner that would
enable it to transform cities.

A seminal on-the-ground conceptualization of urbanism focuses not

so much on what a city looks like as on how a city works as a social
entity. In his article “Urbanism as a Way of Life,” Louis Wirth provides
the sociological definition of a city as a relatively large, dense, and
permanent settlement of heterogeneous individuals.48 Wirth outlines
a theory of urbanism based on these characteristics and argues for its
further elaboration, testing, and revision. Wirth suggests that urbanism as
a mode of life may be studied in three ways: (1) as a physical structure
with a population, technology, and ecological order; (2) as a system of
social organization with a structure, series of institutions, and patterns
of relationships, and (3) as a set of attitudes and ideas, and groups of
people engaged in typical forms of collective behavior. In order to be
effective, designers and urbanists have to understand and engage with all
three. For example, the attributes of the material city – such as patterns of
land use, land values, rentals and ownership, nature and functioning
of physical structures, of housing, of transportation and communication
facilities, of public utilities – are affected by and affect the urban mode of
life.49 If urbanists had a better understanding of this dynamic, cities could
be far better places. One way to develop this understanding is to examine
the human values that lead to and dominate the design of cities.

21
What Can Urbanism Be?

Kevin Lynch offers a significant step in this direction in his deeply

humanist book Good City Form, by first providing what is perhaps the
most breathtaking view of theory in urbanism as a field and practice. He
provides an explanation of the ways in which theory is essential to the
practice of design and urbanism. He suggests that “a developed theory
of cities will be simultaneously normative and explanatory … [because]
it is impossible to explain how a city should be, without understanding
how it is … An understanding of how a city is depends on a valuing
of what it should be. Values and explanations are inextricable.”50 Lynch
defines city design as the art of creating possibilities for the use,
management, and form of settlements or their significant parts.51 Thus,
city design concerns itself with human activities, institutions of control,
and the three-dimensionality of objects.

In contrast to contemporary theories such as parametric urbanism

and landscape urbanism, the primary asset of the theory of Good City
Form is that it is an integrative approach grounded in the reality of
practice. Practice involves multiple and often conflicting stakeholders
and objectives. Such situations require the challenging tasks of
establishing priorities and making difficult trade-offs rather than the
singular and overly narrow approaches of green design, landscape, and
neo-traditionalism, because there is a need to simultaneously address
a wide range of issues such as economic development, social justice,
choice of housing types, access to a variety of transportation modes,
and historic preservation and adaptive reuse.

There are three additional reasons why Good City Form is an especially
useful theory to inform the future of urban practice. First, the theory
is articulated in an accessible manner without resorting to esoteric
language or obscure philosophical and scientific references, as
contemporary architectural theory is prone to do, for example. For
Lynch, it is important that “decisions about cities, if they are to be
openly arrived at, require communicable reasonings. A principal motive
in shaping this theory into its present form has been a political one …
The theory is intended to be useful, not only in any cultural context,
but also to nonprofessionals in open debate.”52 Lynch’s accessible and
indeed democratic concepts of urban design are in marked contrast
to theorists who conceptualize the field in extremely narrow terms,

22
 What Can Urbanism Be?

such as an extension of the architectural imagination or the physical

consequences of government politics.53

Second, the book is explicit about building a theory based on humanist

values by examining what is fundamental and shared in society, such
as biological comfort, social interaction, access to resources, and a
sense of identity. The examination of normative values is important in
urban design practice because:

decisions about urban policy, or the allocation of resources, or

where to move, or how to build something, must use norms about
good and bad. Short-range or long-range, broad or selfish, implicit
or explicit, values are an inevitable ingredient of any decision.
Without some sense of better, any action is perverse. When values
lie unexamined, they are dangerous.54

The values Lynch articulates for his theory of urban design are
humanist in the sense that they reflect an attitude that is centered on
human interests, rather than, say, technology, abstract geometry, or the
pure aesthetics of space and structure. Humanists possess a worldview
and moral philosophy that considers human beings to be of primary
importance and ethical stances that attach importance to human dignity,
concerns, and capabilities.55 As urban designers, Lynch’s humanist
thinking provokes us to reflect on important questions such as: What do
we truly cherish about our cities, what should we cherish, and why?

The third reason why Good City Form is relevant to the future
of urbanism is due to its appropriate level of abstraction as a
useful theory. A major challenge of any theory is that of general
universalizations that become overly generic or specific design
strategies that are too formulaic. In this dilemma, Lynch emphasizes

the aims in between, that is, those goals that are as general as
possible, and thus do not dictate particular physical solutions,
and yet whose achievement can be detected and explicitly linked
to physical solutions. This is the familiar notion of performance
standards, applied at the city scale. The proper level of generality
is likely to be just above that which specifies some spatial
arrangement. For example, neither “a pleasant environment” nor

23
What Can Urbanism Be?

“a tree on every lot,” but “the microclimate should fall within such
and such range in summer” or even “some long-lived living thing
should be visible from every dwelling.”56

In this sense, the thinking in Good City Form – and in this book – is
both abstract enough to be applicable to different contexts, while being
deep enough to question not just “what to do” and “how to do it”,
but also “why?” and “why not?” – which is essential to consequential
design practice. Lynch begins to draw out the intricate relationship
between theory and practice in ways that inform the arguments of the
following chapters of Designing Urban Transformation, while his deeply
humanistic and interdisciplinary stance towards the city highlights what
urbanism can be rather than dwelling on what it has been.

Drawing inspiration from the work of Henri Lefebvre, Manuel Castells,

Sharon Zukin, and others, urban theorist and critic Alexander Cuthbert
complements Lynch’s approach to theory by arguing that thinking and
practicing urbanism occurs with reference to a larger system of spatial
political economy:

On the surface, [urbanists] may be involved in the somewhat

mundane process of fulfilling a client brief, implementing a local
area environmental plan, or assembling development controls
for some nebulous planning authority … At a fundamental level,
and as a matter of their own legitimation, [urbanists] should
remain conscious of their involvement in the historically generated
ideological process of reproducing urban space.57

The spatial political economy perspective adds much needed depth

and richness to theories of urbanism in that it may be considered
as a “meta-narrative … [that] incorporates the spatial interests of
social science, geography, cultural studies, economics, architecture,
art history and other disciplines, and existential positions such as
feminism, and sustainability … Another property of spatial political
economy is its wholesale rejection of any division of knowledge based
upon professional and academic boundaries,” which enables it to frame,
investigate, strategize, intervene, and reflect upon city-design-and-
building processes with far greater freedom and impact than narrower
disciplinary perspectives of architecture or urban design.58

24
 What Can Urbanism Be?

An understanding of spatial political economy also points to

“the symbolic expression of urban meaning, and of the historical
superimposition of urban meanings (and their forms), always
determined by a conflictive process between historical actors,” as
Manuel Castells writes.59 The conflictive process is the strategizing and
decision-making that occurs among the different interests of multiple
stakeholders embedded within political and economic power structures.
Within this process the question of power is central, as Sharon Zukin
writes:

The constant rebuilding of cities in core capitalist societies suggests

that the major condition of architectural production is to create
shifting material landscapes. These landscapes bridge space
and time; they also directly mediate economic power by both
conforming to and structuring norms of market driven investment,
production and consumption.60

A pertinent question that emerges from this line of thought for

urbanists to ponder is: How much power do they actually wield to truly
shape cities?

Shift in Practice: Designing Transformation

Given the quantitative and qualitative significance of cities described

at the beginning of this chapter, the question arises as to who actually
designs or shapes cities, and what role urbanists play in their design.
Urbanists are the only professionals trained explicitly to envision the
four-dimensional future of cities, including the crucial dimension of
time. The urbanists’ approach – creative, integrative, interdisciplinary,
and action-oriented – makes them among the most well-qualified
problem-solvers in the world, especially when it comes to one of the
most pressing challenges of the 21st century: the making of cities in
ways that help people flourish. These unique skills and interdisciplinary
thinking are extremely valuable, yet severely limited in their
effectiveness.

The paradox of urbanism is that while urbanists possess the capabilities

of deploying creative ways of addressing problems and shaping the

25
What Can Urbanism Be?

material city, their often singular obsession with aesthetics, form, and
space reduces their effectiveness. Formal obsessions and project-
oriented thinking ensure that urbanists continue to be at the mercy of
more powerful generators of urban form. What is missing in formal
project-based thinking is critical engagement with a set of larger urban
systems and templates. What gets built is dictated by the intertwining
dynamics of economic and political power in society. How and where it
gets built is subject to a host of laws, codes, standards, and regulations
that reflect the interests of political powers and pressure groups.

Conventional urbanists who engage in mainstream forms of practice

emerging out of urban design, architecture, landscape architecture,
and city planning often cast themselves as stewards of the material
city, guardians of the public interest, and champions of the aesthetics
of cityscapes.61 They are most often viewed as such by many of those
who shape the fields, such as academics and design journalists. Such
urbanists are also essentially servants of their clients, employers, and
others who wield greater power over the city. They also normally do not
shape cities in more significant ways, such as legislating public policies
like land use regulations or building codes, nor do they typically invest
capital in urban development or mobilize communities to advocate for
neighborhood issues.

Urbanists have long been obsessed almost solely with issues of urban
form,62 much to the detriment of innovations in other critical aspects of
urban design such as the complicated contestations of public decision-
making, or the formulaic and somewhat restrictive conventions of
private real estate development. Recent publications on urban design
speak of urban designers becoming more alert to the social and natural
sciences, to transportation and civil engineering, water and waste
management, and zoning and public policy.63 In professional practice
there is a welcome trend to broaden both an understanding of urban
design as a field and to be more inclusive of its practice, for example,
by incorporating the work of landscape architects (e.g., ecological
systems approaches) and planners (e.g., public policy and land use
regulation). For example, an emerging theme in urban design is that of
landscape urbanism, with its promise of integrating land use, ecological
systems thinking, and distinctive place-making.64

26
 What Can Urbanism Be?

Thus, while contemporary discussions on urban design show some

promise – for example, urban design as a state of mind – discussions
continue to focus almost exclusively on matters of form (e.g., new
ways of organizing cities,65 or products and objects such as new
neighborhoods, commercial corridors, edge cities, and downtowns66),
rather than the processes by which we choose priorities, address
challenges, and conceive of the future city. Such processes are
particularly relevant in three ways: the world is becoming increasingly
urban with the majority of the population now living in cities, cities
are the primary sites of crises such as lack of economic opportunities
or adequate shelter, and the fastest growing and most complex urban
areas are now in the developing regions of Asia, Africa, and Latin
America.67 Urbanists can bring their knowledge, experience, and
creative talents to the rapidly changing and complex processes of
urbanism, provided that they have the appropriate conceptual tools.

In summary, while there is much to be admired in the literature on the

urbanism and the design of the material city, this book proposes that
it is still an anemic field that has yet to fulfill its potential. This book
focuses on what is still a poorly theorized and poorly understood area
of inquiry and practice. Furthermore, rather than a relatively passive
understanding of urbanism based on what it has been or what it is
now, I propose radical shifts towards an empowered understanding
derived from what it could be. Rather than ask, “What is urban design?”
which focuses on a narrowly defined conventional understanding of
the status quo of the field, I ask “What can urbanism be?” which posits
an interrogative exploration of the potential of a more inclusive field of
thinking and action.

The point of the proposed shifts is not simply to articulate another way
of doing things (e.g., another set of “best practices” or fashionable
trends that build on aesthetically based epistemologies) but to develop
a profoundly critical engagement with cities and to offer intellectual
and ethical guideposts for transformative action. These conceptual
shifts address changes in the underlying values and deeper beliefs
in urbanism such that they lead to different goals for the city. In
parallel, by shifting terminology from urban design to urbanism, I
propose that we include in the realm of practice more than those
conventionally trained to be urban designers, architects, landscape

27
What Can Urbanism Be?

architects, and city planners – although they continue to have much

to contribute. An urbanist is a person who engages with the shaping
of cities on an everyday basis. In fact, some of the most cutting-edge
ideas and exciting practices come out of activist, advocacy, and
nonprofit organizations, including those working on issues of social
and environmental justice, housing for the poor, transportation such
as walking, bicycles, and mass transit, equal access to public space,
legal rights for street vendors and public protestors, and democratic
decision-making regarding allocation of resources and public as well as
private investments in cities.

Overview of the Book

This book is the result of deep engagement with city-design-and-

building processes. Even as a student, while I engorged myself
with the knowledge and skills of art, architecture, urban design, city
planning, and public policy, I maintained a healthy skepticism towards
the claims of effectiveness that each field makes in its own singular
way. The book marries this healthy skepticism with an imperative for
critical practice. Building on a diagnostic introduction to the state of
the art of thinking in urbanism in this chapter, subsequent chapters
continue to craft an argument of the ways in which conceptual and
practical shifts in urbanism can yield far more significant results in
the design of cities by posing crucial questions and trampling across
disciplinary boundaries. This includes drawing not only from the
aforementioned fields but also casting a much wider net for answers,
especially the philosophical movement known as Pragmatism, and
extending it to even municipal budgeting and comedy improvisation
where necessary.

In Chapter 2, “Discovering the Nexus: Pragmatism, Rural Habitat, and

Urbanism,” I continue to argue for addressing the question “What can
urbanism be?” by drawing inspiration from Pragmatism. Over the
years, as a student, practitioner, scholar, and teacher of urbanism, I
have returned time and again to the values of Pragmatist philosophy for
understanding the relationship between society, cities, and fundamental
transformation. Pragmatism delves far deeper than conventional
theories of design, practice, and urbanism, in that it is a philosophy

28
 What Can Urbanism Be?

of how we think, which is similar to the idea of metacognition; that is,

thinking about thinking.

While Pragmatism points towards a deep theory of urbanism, we also

need to examine and reflect upon experiences of deep practice. Thus,
while deep theory deals with very big and complicated issues, deep
practice is immersive and engages directly with tough problems on the
ground; and it is at this nexus that this book lies with the possibility
for transformation. Deep theory in design comes from philosophy
because conventional thinking on urbanism does not address the truly
complicated nature of practice in cities. Deep practice emerges out of
a variety of strategies, including not only creative design thinking, but
also civil engineering, public policy, community mobilization, municipal
budgeting, comedy improvisation, parking management, political
decision-making, and so forth, as the case studies demonstrate.

The selection of case studies in Chapters 3 to 5 was the result of a

two-year process of research, scrutiny, and criteria-based selection. The
primary criterion was: Is this an example of transformative urbanism,
and if so, in what way? A secondary criterion was: Does this example
illustrate, and even push further, each of the conceptual shifts: city as
flux, consequences of design, or urbanism as creative political act? The
third major criterion was: Does the case study reflect the challenge of
designing within different cultural, historical, and political–economic
contexts in different parts of the world? The fourth criterion was a
practical one: Is there enough documentation of primary sources
(e.g., site visits, authors’ photographs, personal interviews, original
documents) and/or secondary sources (e.g., journal, magazine, and
newspaper articles, books, scholarly studies by other authors) to justify
a thorough and fruitful analysis of the case study?

The case studies are analyzed via the following conceptual frameworks:

• Chapter 2, “Discovering the Nexus: Pragmatism, Rural Habitat,

and Urbanism”

– Rural Habitat Development Programme, Gujarat, India by

Aga Khan Development Network and Aseem Inam, 1987 to
present.

29
What Can Urbanism Be?

• Chapter 3, “Beyond Objects: City as Flux”

– Olympic Village, Barcelona, Spain by MBM Puidomènech

and Vila Olímpica Societat Anònima, 1986 to 1992.

– Al-Azhar Park, Cairo, Egypt by Aga Khan Trust for Culture

and Sites International, 1984 to 2005.

– MIT Experimental Design Studio, Boston, USA by Aseem

Inam, and City Design and Development graduate students
at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2009.

• Chapter 4, “Beyond Intentions: Consequences of Design”

– Centre Pompidou, Paris, France by Renzo Piano, Richard

Rogers, Gianfranco Franchini, and Centre National d’Art et
de Culture Georges Pompidou, 1970 to 1977.

– India Habitat Centre, New Delhi, India by Joseph Stein

with Aseem Inam, and Housing and Urban Development
Corporation, 1988 to 1993.

– Central Artery/Tunnel Project “Big Dig,” Boston, USA

by Massachusetts Highway Department, Massachusetts
Turnpike Authority, and Bechtel/Parsons Brinckerhoff, 1991
to 2007.

• Chapter 5, “Beyond Practice: Urbanism as a Creative Political Act”

– Uptown Whittier Specific Plan, Los Angeles, USA by Moule

& Polyzoides Architects and Urbanists with Aseem Inam and
City of Whittier, 2006 to 2008.

– Parque da Terceira Agua, Belo Horizonte, Brazil by

Companhia Urbanizadora de Belo Horizonte and M3
Arquitetura, 2004 to 2012.

– Orangi Pilot Project, Karachi, Pakistan by Orangi Pilot

Project Research and Training Institute and the residents of
Orangi township, 1980 to present.

The thinking behind this wide scope of case studies is to do two

things: (1) to emphasize the significance of the underlying conceptual
framework derived from Pragmatism as a powerful force in designing

30
 What Can Urbanism Be?

urban transformation, and (2) to illustrate how these conceptual shifts

might operate in the vastly different historical, geographical, and
political contexts of cities all over the world. The divergent case studies
are framed by three conceptual shifts: beyond material objects: city as
flux; beyond intentions: consequences of design; and beyond practice:
urbanism as a creative political act. The beginning of each chapter
explains these conceptual shifts and then describes how each case
study illustrates the conceptual shift. For example, “city as flux” in
Barcelona analyzes how a five-year design project is in fact an explicit
and integral part of a 100-year process of urbanism; in Cairo it is how a
fairly standard landscape architecture project has become a potentially
never-ending strategy for socio-economic development in a low-income
neighborhood; and in Boston an experimental urban design studio
teaches students how to design in extremely collaborative and creative
ways as much as helping them understand what to design within a
state of flux. The introduction and conclusion of each chapter help
guide the reader in focusing on the specific insights of each case study,
while the case studies help the reader to more clearly understand the
various interpretations and manifestations of a concept that is far richer
and more complex than what it may seem at first. There is no claim
made here that the case studies are perfect or represent panaceas; in
fact, all case studies are by nature flawed in one way or another – the
point is to gain useful, interesting, and even surprising insights from
each one.

Thus, Chapters 1 to 5 cover a critical analysis of the state of the art of

the field of urbanism, an argument for Pragmatism as an exceptionally
worthwhile heuristic for urbanism, and three conceptual shifts
illustrated by nine case study analyses of city as flux, consequences
of design, and urbanism as a creative political act. Chapter 6 then
concludes with a discussion of transformation. While the term is
used quite frequently, it tends to refer to either superficial or even
mundane types of changes that cities undergo. I argue for more drastic
and fundamental types of changes, such as significant structural
ones. I conclude by claiming that if we are to truly design urban
transformation, the conceptual shifts and illustrative case studies may
be just the beginning and we may have to go much further in our
endeavors. Fortunately, there are many inspirations to draw from, if we
have the courage to rise to the occasion.

31
2
Discovering the Nexus:
Pragmatism, Rural Habitat,
and Urbanism

Philosophy of Pragmatism

In this book, I use “Pragmatism” with a capital “P” rather than the
lower case “p” commonly found in the literature on the philosophy
because I want to focus this discussion on a particular set of
philosophical ideas rather than the commonly understood notion of
pragmatism as simply a practical and expedient approach to issues
and problems. As in many philosophical movements, there are many
divergent and sometimes conflicting perspectives, which have been
treated in other publications.1 Even among classical Pragmatists there
is a range of positions, from the critical realist Pragmatism of Charles
Peirce that assumed a world of which human beings had fallible
knowledge, to the perspectivism of John Dewey in which knowledge
and the world was an outcome of action in different socio-cultural
settings.2 For the purposes of this study, my interest is in treating
Pragmatism as a broad umbrella under which a diverse range of such
thoughts exists. Pragmatism was the most influential philosophical
movement in the United States during the first quarter of the 20th
century.3 Although its influence was distinctly American, it was also

32
 Discovering the Nexus: Pragmatism, Rural Habitat, and Urbanism

felt across Europe through different expressions developed by English,

French, and German thinkers. Thus, Pragmatism is best understood as
a movement rather than by any one doctrine. Furthermore, Pragmatism
stands out as a movement that affected not only academic philosophy
but also had a profound impact on the study of law, education, political
and social theory, religion, and the arts.

Pragmatism has proved useful in understanding modern society and

institutions because of its emphasis on practical consequences of
knowledge, meaning, and value. Through the lens of Pragmatism, an
ideology or proposition is true if and only if it works satisfactorily; the
meaning of a proposition is to be found in the practical consequences
of accepting it, and impractical ideas are rejected. Pragmatists
emphasize applying an experimental method to the development
of ideas and theories while trusting the mind’s ability to interpret,
analyze, and understand the world. Founders of Pragmatist thought
were frustrated with earlier theories and concepts they believed were
limiting human possibilities, making it more difficult to act in the world;
accordingly, they embarked on an “effort to unhitch human beings
from … a useless structure of bad abstractions about thought.”4 In this
manner, scholars view Pragmatism as a fundamentally distinct and
ultimately transformative way of thinking, and examining its origins
allows us to grasp why it can be a powerfully enabling framework for
contemporary urbanism.

Pragmatism as a philosophical movement began in the United States

in the 1870s. Its overall direction was determined initially by the
thought and work of Charles Sanders Peirce, William James, and
Chauncey Wright, and later by John Dewey and George Herbert Mead.
The first use in print of the word pragmatism was in 1898 by James,
who credited Peirce with having coined the term during the early
1870s. As is true in any history of ideas, Pragmatism emerged from
its origins as a series of intellectual conversations that grew out of a
wide range of experiences in the world. Initial analyses were deepened
and broadened into a general philosophy of psychology and logic, a
philosophy of the operation of thought in controlling future experience
with knowledge qualified by values, and an empirical methodology of
the use of language and the nature of inquiry and judgment. If there is
any one co-founder of Pragmatism who deserves particular mention it

33
Discovering the Nexus: Pragmatism, Rural Habitat, and Urbanism

is Charles Peirce, who is credited as “the most original, versatile, and

comprehensive philosophical mind” the United States has produced.5

In 1878, Charles Peirce wrote about what would come to be known

as the “Pragmatic maxim.” In this maxim, Peirce explains how the
consequences of an idea in practice can help us distinguish the intent
of a particular value, belief, or theory from thoughts and unnecessary
abstractions that make no practical difference. In order to understand
a conception in a fruitful way, Peirce believed it is crucial to consider
“what effects that might conceivably have practical bearings you
conceive the objects of your conception to have. Then, your conception
of those effects is the whole of your conception of the object.”6 Two
decades later James introduced the actual term Pragmatism in a
lecture, “Philosophical Conceptions and Practical Results,” he delivered
on a visit to the University of California at Berkeley in 1898, in which he
further elaborated upon Peirce’s “Pragmatic maxim.” I discuss this idea
and its relevance to urbanism in greater detail in Chapter 4.

In addition to focusing on the consequences of theory or thought,

Peirce advocated that a certain kind of experimentation ought to
drive philosophical inquiry. Peirce developed the idea that inquiry
depends on real doubt, not mere verbal or hyperbolic doubt. In other
words, experimentation requires honesty about what is not known
in the present. The experimental mental reflection that flows from
doubt allows one to develop conceptions while always thinking about
circumstances that would confirm or negate the conception. This
experimentation is not meant to be too widely empirical, disappearing
into a cloud of abstract what-if scenarios, nor is it meant to color
reality with rationality so specific that the big picture is lost. The key
is that hypotheses should be rigorously tested through direct action
in the world, an idea that is central to a conception of transformative
urbanism.

Key Principles

From its early days, Pragmatism was distinct in its sweeping rejection
of older philosophical inquiry. For example, Pragmatism clearly rejects
Descartes’s pursuit of a First Philosophy, claiming that there is nothing

34
 Discovering the Nexus: Pragmatism, Rural Habitat, and Urbanism

to be gained from debating the general foundation of reality or great

truths that claim to answer all the philosophical questions. Instead,
much of the body of Pragmatist thought focuses on how an idea fulfills
human goals along with evidence for and against the likelihood of its
truth. Over time Pragmatism has evolved into a way of thinking that
involves a certain group of theses, theses which may be and indeed
were, argued very differently by different philosophers with different
concerns. Because of this, it is primarily as a movement rather than
by any one doctrine that Pragmatism is best understood today.
Pragmatism has a potential future as a suggestive body of ideas with
a wealth of materials, insights, and analyses pertinent to and often
anticipating current advances in philosophy.

The Pragmatic tradition is one that continues to evolve and was given
fresh impetus with the work of Richard Rorty and others in the 1990s.
Such works as Rorty’s book, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature,
paved the way for a revival of Pragmatist philosophy that continues to
the present. Many newcomers to philosophy and Pragmatism take the
seemingly divergent views with the movement as a sign of relativism
or as intellectually confused, when this is not the case. Pragmatism is
not equivalent to crude epistemological relativism, in which every view
is as good as any other, to the extent that there is no point in believing
anything. Neither is it equivalent to crude ontological relativism, in
which we make the world as we see fit, defying gravity at whim and
flouting the molecular structure of building materials at will. Despite
the varieties of Pragmatist thought and misconceptions about it that
have emerged over time, there are a number of key principles that
characterize Pragmatism: anti-foundationalism, social character of
knowledge, contingency, experimentation, and pluralism.7

Anti-Foundationalism

Anti-foundationalism is one of the most central tenets of Pragmatist

thought. This tenet claims that ideas do not already exist in perfect
form; they emerge contingently and experimentally in response to the
particular needs and practices of people as they live out their lives in
a given place and time. In other words, Pragmatism is conceived as a
philosophy of practice achievement: ideas are labeled true when they

35
Discovering the Nexus: Pragmatism, Rural Habitat, and Urbanism

enable us to get things done, when they cope effectively with the world.
Unlike philosophical theories of knowledge that succumbed to the
Platonic urge by positing fixed, unquestionable grounds, Pragmatists
believe that indubitable epistemological foundations neither existed nor
were necessary.

Anti-foundationalism informs the Pragmatist attitude “of looking

away from first things, principles, categories, supposed necessities;
and of looking towards last things, fruits, consequences, and facts.”8
Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes describes an application
of this: “The life of law has not been logic; it has been experience.”9
Holmes did not mean that there is no logic in the law. He meant that
what guides the direction of the law, from case to case over time, is
not immutable reason but changing experience, which in this context
is the life history of society. The stance is anti-foundational in that
there are no foundations for knowledge outside human discourse, no
appeals to an ultimate reality that can be made. Within the tenet of
anti-foundationalism there is no one particular methodology, but the
appropriate way of proceeding is based on what works best in the real
world.10

Social Character of Knowledge

Knowledge for the Pragmatists is constitutively social: “Beliefs were

collective products, hammered out on the social anvil, a response to
the peculiar conditions and human needs found within a given social
environment.”11 This is not a social determinism; there is still space
for individuality and the crucial component of diversity. A perspective
which recognizes the social character of knowledge understands that
even the most solitary of geniuses like Isaac Newton are thoroughly
enmeshed in a set of social relations.

Newton recognized that he stood “on the shoulders of giants” who

preceded him; that is, he was part of a larger tradition that was as much
social as it was intellectual.12 The problems on which Newton worked,
the techniques on which he drew, the scientific instruments he used, the
logic he deployed, and the reception accorded to his findings, were
the consequence of a set of explicit and implicit social agreements.

36
 Discovering the Nexus: Pragmatism, Rural Habitat, and Urbanism

Furthermore, for Newton’s theory of gravity to become true, and for

gravity to be recognized as real, it was necessary that there was an
accord within the community in which he worked that his formulation
coped better with the world than anyone else’s. The point is that such an
agreement involved a set of inherent social processes.

This social characteristic was championed by Thomas Kuhn in his

notion of “paradigm” that appeared in The Structure of Scientific
Revolutions, in which there is no standard higher than the assent of
the relevant community in choosing the dominant paradigm. However,
claiming that knowledge was social did not mean it was free floating,
that anything counted as truth. For knowledge to be true under the
Pragmatist definition it needs to be useful; that is, to enable human
beings to accomplish their purposes. If it does not, there would be
no social agreement. Newton’s formulation of gravity was accepted
as true because it enabled his community of natural philosophers to
understand territorial and heavenly movement better than any other
formulation available, and it continued to be true until Einstein devised
his General Theory of Relativity. Afterwards it was relativity that better
allowed humans to meet their practical ends; that is, it proved itself
good in the way of belief.13

Contingency

Charles Darwin theorized that in the face of unpredictability, communities

of organisms adapt or evolve to carry certain characteristics that favor
survival. For Darwin, the evolution of organisms is not random; new
traits must come from past or present traits. Contingency says that the
development of human beings and of intelligence was the result of
many evolutionary branching points, where the progression was heavily
influenced by external events such as meteor impacts and climate
change.14 Similarly, Pragmatists believe that

ideas do not develop according to some inner logic of their own,

but are entirely dependent, like germs, on their human carriers and
the environment. And they believed that since ideas are provisional
responses to particular and unreproducible circumstances, their
survival depends not on their immutability but their adaptability.15

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Discovering the Nexus: Pragmatism, Rural Habitat, and Urbanism

Such an approach requires Pragmatists to be comfortable adapting

or even relinquishing old ideas that are no longer supported by new
circumstances. In fact, contingency should be seen as an opportunity by
making chance work for us rather than against us. For example, while
the devastating earthquake of 1985 in Mexico City was a contingent
event, it was also used as an opportunity to vastly improve the city,
especially for the lower-income residents who lived in the historic core
of the city.16 The extremely successful housing rebuilding program,
Renovacion Habitacional Popular, was possible because planning
agencies and community groups were able to adapt and change, to
build on established experiences while trying out new ideas, some of
which may have seemed outlandish but would nonetheless transform
parts of the city.

Experimentation

Human beings must continuously experiment to survive in a world

that is always changing. Justice Holmes, cited earlier, once said,
“All life is an experiment. Every year if not every day we have to
wager our salvation upon some prophecy based upon imperfect
knowledge.”17 While most experiments will fail, the ambition is that
new arrangements, techniques, devices, institutions, methods, scientific
or artistic endeavors, and in the case of urbanism, design strategies,
will be successful and enable human flourishing. We must be hopeful
enough to abandon preconceived notions while trusting that results will
illuminate the path forward.

The Pragmatists see great value in the methods and attitudes of

empirical sciences, especially the habit of questioning and exploring,
testing answers and discoveries in relation to empirical evidence of
one kind or another. It was the practice of questioning and testing that
was the essence of the method.18 Richard Rorty reemphasized Dewey’s
concern with developing the intelligence of democracy through
encouraging a vigorous and critical culture of public debate. Democracy
is crucial in this process because every voice of experience must be
heard in order to discover best practices that will illuminate new theory.
In this sense, practice is primary in philosophy.

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 Discovering the Nexus: Pragmatism, Rural Habitat, and Urbanism

Pluralism

“Difference, otherness, opposition, and contradiction rather

than being reconciled as Georg Hegel’s concept of Aughebung
suggested, should be juxtaposed, contrasted, brought together in
opposition, made to groan and protest in their adjacency.”19

Pragmatists insist that ideas don’t add up to an ultimate, single truth,

pure and simple, because theories will never completely represent
human life; a theory is an attempt to make sense of the world, a
partial construction of reality. Life is more complicated, messier, more
contingent than any singular and totalizing theory can articulate.

One of the central arguments of Rorty’s book, Philosophy and the Mirror
of Nature, is that philosophy should move away from the very project
of epistemology towards what Rorty variously calls hermeneutics,
edification, kibitizing, or conversation. By hermeneutics, Rorty means
the study of interpretation and meaning, which is significant because
different individuals and communities in effect operate within different
and often incommensurable paradigms, resulting in potentially radically
different interpretations. The important point for Rorty is that we should
not take fright at the existence of these different interpretations, but,
in following hermeneutics, “see the[ir] relation … a[s] … strands in
a possible conversation, a conversation which presupposed no
disciplinary matrix which unites the speakers, but where the hope of
agreement is never lost so long as the conversation lasts.”20 Following
such a framework, a practitioner of philosophy or urbanism would not
give up in the face of differences, think of such differences as a mistake,
suppose that the differences have not yet been properly analyzed as
analytic philosophy does, or even try to reconcile all the difference
through a metaphysical construct. Instead, the goal is to recognize
the potential opportunities and gain from interaction and exchange,
through conversation and argument.

Similarly, for philosopher Richard Bernstein, a Pragmatist mission

is to widen the community of inquiry by convening a plurality
of philosophical voices and to provide conditions that nurture
conversation among them.21 The Pragmatists understood individual
identity as formed in social contexts through all kinds of relations

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Discovering the Nexus: Pragmatism, Rural Habitat, and Urbanism

with others. They sought to avoid polarizing positions, as expressed in

abstract ideological principles. The Pragmatist approach attempted to
move beyond dualisms and dichotomies such as mind/body, fact/value,
and theory/practice. Its emphasis was on practical judgment situated
in specific contexts. For example, while social justice for people in all
kinds of diverse situations was central to Dewey’s thinking, he rejected
the Marxist conception of society as structured foundationally by a
clash between classes over material distribution and he found Marxist
politics overly doctrinaire and dogmatic.22 A pluralist view takes account
of different perspectives and actual experiences of social justice.

Pragmatist Inspirations for Urbanism

The above five principles combine to form a basic framework of

Pragmatist thought. Underlying this exploration of Pragmatism has
been the idea that theory and practice cannot be considered separately.
How we think about a particular concept often determines how we act.
Even with such great promise, Pragmatism is not a perfect theoretical
framework. A common critique of Pragmatism is that it opens the door
to moral nihilism of the sort that James identified with Nietzsche, to
a kind of relativism, to a deeply dangerous “anything-goes” approach
to the world. Critics also find it to be too self-reflexive, always open to
adaptation based on how its ideas work out in practice. Indeed, “no
parts of our thinking are immune to the weight of evidence that might
come in future experience.”23 However, for Pragmatists, adhering to
rigid principles is not as important as promoting continued dialogue,
inquiry, and further understanding.

Furthermore, Pragmatism should be considered in any analysis of

urbanism because it can help us orient to the challenges we face in the
world today. According to Dewey, “philosophy recovers itself when it
ceases to be a device for dealing with the problems of philosophers
and becomes a method, cultivated by philosophers, for dealing
with problems of men.”24 Because of this type of thinking, Dewey
involved himself in the pressing social and political concerns of his
day, advocating against forms of racial discrimination (e.g., he was a
founder of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored
People), injustices to the working class (e.g., he helped create both the

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 Discovering the Nexus: Pragmatism, Rural Habitat, and Urbanism

League for Industrial Democracy and the New York Teachers Union), and
infringements on free speech (e.g., he was involved in forming both
the American Civil Liberties Union and the American Association of
University Professors). Dewey’s philosophical thinking oriented him to
take significant action in transforming social structures for the better.

The affinities between design and Pragmatism are manifold: both

emphasize an experimental approach to making sense of the world,
both place the ultimate proof of an idea in its realization, and both
thrive while transgressing disciplinary boundaries. Rorty wrote that
philosophical ideas could be used as inspiration for fields of art and
design. He believed that art and politics were perhaps more fertile
grounds for experimentation than even science:

Experimentation in the sciences could come to an end because, so

to speak, we know it all. Experimentation in the politics and the arts
cannot, because, unlike natural science, the function of these areas
of culture are [sic] not known in advance. Arts and politics change
our purposes rather than simply making us better able to achieve
those purposes.25

Pragmatism also has a long-standing connection to the city.26 It was the

work of classical American pragmatists such as Peirce, James, Dewey,
and Mead that was the major intellectual influence on one of the first
sustained efforts at urban theory in the United States. This was the
Chicago School of Urban Ecology that came out of the Department of
Sociology at the University of Chicago in the early decades of the 20th
century. One of the main concepts Chicago School urbanists such as
Robert Park, Ernest Burgess, and Roderick McKenzie took from classical
Pragmatists was its emphasis on the organic nature of life. Whereas
positivism and mechanics were taking social science in the direction of
causality and linearity and the borrowing of models from the natural
sciences, classical Pragmatists stressed the organic web of life as the
basis of understanding social relations. For the Chicago School the city
was seen as an ecosystem in which different social groups vied for
space and survival. While much of the work of the Chicago School has
been surpassed or discredited, the notion of the organic web of life
continues to manifest itself in various guises, such as network analysis.

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Discovering the Nexus: Pragmatism, Rural Habitat, and Urbanism

Pragmatism assists us in knowing what to look for in our ideas that are
central to urbanism, such as the idea of city.27 Instead of an essential
definition of city, it could be defined according to how it is used,
by what it is being asked to accomplish. For example, a humanistic
perspective concerned with understanding city as the embodiment of
human meaning and experience will have a different definition than
a Marxist one concerned with understanding it as a fulcrum point in
capitalist reproduction and accumulation. The Pragmatist response
is not to determine the one true definition but to ask: To what extent
does each definition accomplish its purpose? The philosophy of
Pragmatism emphasizes that a particular conception of the city will
only be sustained if there is a community to support it. Furthermore,
Pragmatists would argue that in order for city as an idea to be taken up,
used, and passed on, it needs to be pliable and adaptable, to cope with
unpredictability and change. In addition, experimenting with different
notions of city is beneficial because it may result in positive effects.
Ideas of city are never innocent, but can produce real effects. The
Pragmatist idea of pluralism is a reminder that city is not the last word,
but only the beginning of a trail of further “ands.” Moreover, those
“ands,” such as place, space, landscape, scale, site, locale, context, do
not necessarily cohere.

To design for urban transformation is to begin to see the world

through the eyes of a Pragmatist. The objects, intentions, and practice
of conventional urbanism will always be secondary to the real
consequences that design has in relation to the deeper structures of a
changing city. A Pragmatist is not interested in simply tinkering with the
social and physical structures of knowledge that already exist; radical
conversion is necessary. Urbanist culture – the framework within which
urban practitioners operate – must not only adapt, but also shape the
new realities and complexities of the 21st-century city in order to bring
about fundamental change.

Discovering Pragmatism in Practice

I discovered Pragmatism after several years of working in the field,

and found surprising similarities, overlaps, and insights between my
experiences in practice and the ideas of Pragmatism. Deep practice

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 Discovering the Nexus: Pragmatism, Rural Habitat, and Urbanism

in the field made two things clear: on the one hand, the inadequacy
of many conventional design theories that are taught in urbanism
programs, and on the other, the enlightening quality of Pragmatist
thought to illuminate both the messiness of urbanism and its unfulfilled
potential. The first major experience on this journey of deep practice,
constant reflection, and theoretical insight came with the Rural Habitat
Development Program (henceforth referred to as the Rural Program)
with the Aga Khan Planning and Building Service India. Readers may
question the relevance of a rural program in the remote villages of
India to the transformative potential of 21st-century urbanism. As I
argue in the following sections, there are many valuable insights and
lessons learnt that illustrate Pragmatist principles and can serve as
strategies for the future of cities. As Co-Founder and Architect-in-Charge
of the Rural Program, I developed a research- and partnership-based,
flexible, and open-ended model of practice for transforming the built
environment. Years later as this approach became increasingly adaptive
and effective, I realized that the model has much in common with
Pragmatist thought, especially its notions of anti-foundationalism, the
social character of knowledge, and experimentation.

In 1987, I designed the Rural Program for the Aga Khan Planning and
Building Service India (henceforth referred to as Planning and Building
Service), which is a nonprofit member of the Aga Khan Development
Network, a group of private, international, non-denominational
agencies working to improve living conditions and opportunities for
people in specific regions of the developing world.28 I was tasked
with conceiving and implementing a brand new program to design
and build rural housing in the state of Gujarat, about 250 miles (400
kilometers) northwest of Mumbai. The villages were small, remote
(Figure 2.1), and faced many challenges, including cycles of flooding
and drought, as well as a lack of access to financial and material
resources.

While the clear mandate of the new program was to design and build
houses for the rural poor, I knew the situation in rural areas to be
much more complex. First of all, while rural residents know how to
design and build houses, the real challenge was access to resources,
especially housing finance and improved building materials. Second,
it was not obvious that designing and building new houses was

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Discovering the Nexus: Pragmatism, Rural Habitat, and Urbanism

actually a top priority for the residents themselves; it was more likely
to be infrastructure issues such as a supply of clean water, adequate
sanitation and sewage, and the provision of civic amenities.29 To test
these ideas, I proposed a strategy of field research to establish the
exact nature of needs and problems, identify villages that showed the
most promise for initiatives, and build partnerships with other nonprofit
organizations and government programs in Gujarat that were already
working on these issues.

The extensive field research was focused on finding out two things: (1)
what were the most pressing challenges, and (2) what was the most
effective way of addressing those challenges. The entire first year of
the program was spent primarily on research and relationship-building
efforts. My team and I spent a great deal of time visiting villages, talking

Figure 2.1 The villages in the Junagadh district of Gujarat, India were small, remote, and
surrounded by peanut farms, with pressing challenges such as a lack of access to resources.
Source: Aseem Inam

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 Discovering the Nexus: Pragmatism, Rural Habitat, and Urbanism

to people, and immersing ourselves in the everyday reality of the rural

environment. We studied local construction materials and techniques
(see Figure 2.2). A key component of this research was to build trust
with community leaders through dialogue and debate. I also analyzed
similar efforts in other parts of the developing world (e.g., Indonesia,
Nigeria, Pakistan), and focused on what types of strategies seemed to
work and which ones did not.

Our research and immersion was not only confined to the material
environment. We also engaged with communities by sharing meals
and participating in local festivals. We had numerous formal and
informal village meetings and danced with community members during
navratri, which is a widely celebrated Hindu festival (see Figure 2.3).
The idea was to embrace the notion that we were not separate from the
communities with which we were working; rather, we were members of

Figure 2.2 Our extensive field research on local construction techniques and materials highlighted
the important role women play, such as in the application of plaster made out of cow dung, straw
and clay.
Source: Aseem Inam

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Discovering the Nexus: Pragmatism, Rural Habitat, and Urbanism

those communities. New understanding that arose from this research

as well as a feeling of empathy led to a radical shift in the original
premise of the program. Instead of designing and building houses for
the residents, we would instead focus on their priorities and establish
long-term processes to empower the residents and mobilize local
resources. While some practitioners may make similar efforts, the real
challenge is to immerse oneself in the complexities of a community by
living, working, and accompanying the residents through their daily
lives, even in the face of differences and disagreements.

Figure 2.3 My colleague and I, wearing all white towards the front of the image, joining the village
community while enjoying ourselves doing the dandya ras, a traditional dance with sticks in the
state of Gujarat.
Source: Aseem Inam

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 Discovering the Nexus: Pragmatism, Rural Habitat, and Urbanism

Our field research revealed the following priorities for the villages. At
the community level they included drinking water sources, quality,
storage, and distribution systems, solid waste disposal and waste
water drainage (see Figure 2.4), and energy sources and supply for
cooking; at the household level they included providing adequate
space for living, cooking, storage, washing, sanitation, and animals,
housing finance, improved building materials, and advanced building
skills.30 Our approach was multidisciplinary, with myself as team leader
and Architect-in-Charge, an administrative assistant from the region
who was familiar with local administrative structures and processes,
a liaison officer who worked with communities to help them organize
and mobilize, a technical adviser to work with the local construction
systems and conduct research on improved technologies, and a project
economist to lead the effort for financing housing and infrastructure
initiatives. Our team lived and worked in the midst of the villages.
We worked on need-based projects but, rather than the traditional

Figure 2.4 As seen in this village, two of the infrastructural priorities were a lack of clean water
supply and a lack of waste water drainage, which in this case simply collects in the dirt road that
then leads to stagnant water, breeding of mosquitoes, and spread of disease.
Source: Aseem Inam

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Discovering the Nexus: Pragmatism, Rural Habitat, and Urbanism

mechanisms used by conventional designers such as drawings and

models, our mechanisms of interventions were meetings, workshops,
training programs, financial schemes, and village organizations. The
goal was to work with a total population of over 18,000 over a period
of five years or so. As seen in the following sections, the program has
in fact benefitted five times that population and is still going strong
twenty-five years later.

I came up with the new approach because I did not initially know
what I was doing; in other words, I did not enter the program with a
pre-conditioned approach or a predetermined formula for success. The
Aga Khan Development Network, headquartered in Geneva, recruited
me while I was still finishing my masters degree in architecture in Paris.
I was fairly open-minded and not committed to any one particular
strategy. I had no experience with conventional ways (based on
foundational ideas of how development should be done) of carrying
out such programs. The leadership of the Aga Khan Network deserves
credit for allowing me time and resources to conduct the research,
which was extremely unusual at the time for a nonprofit organization in
India. At the time of their conception, these ideas and approaches were
new and revolutionary in the context of rural India. As we will see in
later sections, this flexibility and breadth of vision resulted in enormous
impacts two decades later. This open-minded approach also lends itself
well to the Pragmatist principle of anti-foundationalism, which stresses
the contingent emergence of ideas in response to the particular needs
and practices of people as they live their lives in any given place or
time.

To this day, the Planning and Building Service continues to integrate

a research- and partnership-based methodology for its different rural
sub-programs with responsibility falling upon the villagers themselves.
The Gujarat Environmental Health Program exemplified this through
a process of community participation which began with the formation
of a Village Development Committee that represented all sections of
the village community, with a minimum of 30 percent women and 15
percent panchayat (a village governance body) representation.31 The
community contributed up to 70 percent of the cost of providing toilets.
Cash contributions were deposited in a bank account operated jointly
with the Village Development Committee and the Planning and Building

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 Discovering the Nexus: Pragmatism, Rural Habitat, and Urbanism

Service. Such mechanisms of inclusion were integral to the process and

successful consequences of the different sub-programs.

Testing Ideas in Practice

The Program was initially designed to respond to the needs and

opportunities vis-à-vis living conditions of ten villages in Gujarat:
Lathodra, Gangecha, Paswaria, Jonpur, Fagri, Chitravad, Sangodhra,
Bhalchel, Kennedypur, and, Jinjhuda. The villages were small in size,
ranging from a population of 800 in Paswaria to 2,500 in Sangodhra.
We selected these villages because residents suffered from poor
sanitation infrastructure, lack of shelter, and limited access to clean
drinking water – all challenges that we could address as an organization
focused on housing, infrastructure, and planning.32 These villages were
also selected due to their manageable size, stable social conditions,
and their spatial clustering that would enable a critical mass of project
interventions and community mobilizations. We started our long
journey of rural transformation by beginning with a series of modest
projects and learning by doing.

One of the first projects we were asked to do was to design and build
a kitchen for a school in one of the villages. Based on our research, I
incorporated and upgraded local materials, such as stone, tiles, and wood,
as well as improved construction techniques used by the local masons
and carpenters. The first test of being flexible in a constantly changing
situation arrived early on. The village carpenters and masons do not work
with technical drawings such as building plans and sections, and, in fact,
they do not read architectural drawings at all. We immediately shifted our
mode, working on site with village craftsmen and translating our design
ideas into three-dimensional creative thinking on the spot. The project
turned out to be quite successful (Figure 2.5).

In response to demand, we also developed affordable housing

prototypes that were durable, easy to build, and could fit on a small
site that measured only about 25 feet (8 meters) by 35 feet (11 meters).
The construction was based on local limestone that is very strong and
durable, and added prefabricated concrete beams that are cheap and
easy to transport. The use of these beams for the roof ensured that

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Discovering the Nexus: Pragmatism, Rural Habitat, and Urbanism

families could extend the house vertically as needs arose and resources
permitted, for example, as the families grew larger.

We also worked in the village of Sangodhra, which had raised funds

to build a new day care center, and used upgraded local materials and

Figure 2.5 A view of the finished kitchen, using improved local construction materials such as
polished stone, ceramic tile, treated wood, and lighting and ventilation systems.
Source: Aseem Inam

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 Discovering the Nexus: Pragmatism, Rural Habitat, and Urbanism

technologies. We spoke with teachers in the existing day care center,

and used the three-dimensional model of the center not simply as a
mode of presentation but also as a conversation piece to generate
debate and ideas. The design proposed was a 300 by 300 feet square
(91 meters by 91 meters) structure located on the main street of the
village as a gathering place, paved with platforms and a trellis above.
We spent an extensive amount of time understanding the functioning
of the day care center and its needs by talking to the teachers (see
Figure 2.6). The design was also sensitive to the local climate, by
orienting itself to the prevailing breezes and providing shade from
the sun.

Figure 2.6 In this image, I am using the model of the day-care center to discuss with the teachers
how its design attributes fulfill their needs, such as creating a protected courtyard for play activities
and orientation towards prevailing breezes.
Source: Aseem Inam

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Discovering the Nexus: Pragmatism, Rural Habitat, and Urbanism

The point of this approach to design was to empower residents to

ultimately help themselves through a number of strategies, including a
deep understanding of what is going on and how things are changing,
building trust over time and by being part of these communities, and
developing long-term physical infrastructure, organizational capabilities,
and local knowledge and skills for the residents. Thus, small projects
would be small steps in a broader and longer-term strategy.

Through this approach, we were together constructing a reality of what

could be transformed. Every step of the way, intensive dialogue shaped
our understanding of what we could offer in terms of services and
resources, and what the villagers needed to get done. We chose to seek
the opinions of village leaders but to also venture in our Jeep to the
relatively isolated areas, talking to villagers, attending cultural events,
finding out about their problems, letting them get to know us, and us
getting to know them in return. The process of creating this shared
understanding took the form of seminars at the field base, audiovisual
presentations on specific issues, informal group discussions, and
exposure trips to other places and projects. While the smaller informal
gatherings would involve key people in the villages such as the
leadership or masons and carpenters, the larger meetings would
attempt beneficiary consensus on major issues.33 The intent of these
visits was to build mutual learning and understanding, in a manner
highly reminiscent of the Pragmatist principle of the social construction
of knowledge, which is “a kind of knowledge that didn’t already exist in
perfect form but emerged contingently and experimentally in response
to the particular needs and practices of people as they lived out their
lives in a given place and time.”34

We worked on a range of experimental projects: the day care center,

kitchen retrofit, houses that grow over time, and later, sewage and
water supply systems, and alternative modes for cooking that improve
the health of women. The flexibility built into the framework both
advanced and supported such experimentation and developed ideas
in new and unforeseen directions that spawned several sub-programs
over time. The model of flexible frameworks that is the basis for the
sub-programs is analogous to Pragmatist thought. “New projects
usually get started derived from previous projects. Each program
has after implementation an internal evaluation and the outcome of

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 Discovering the Nexus: Pragmatism, Rural Habitat, and Urbanism

the evaluation becomes the focal point for the next program.”35 This
method of reinvigorating old information into newly informed methods
illustrates the experimental capacity of ideas, as subscribed by the
praxis of Pragmatism. At the same time, not all the experiments were
successful in the manner we had intended. For example, the affordable
house that could grow over time was never implemented on a large
scale because the need for infrastructure required greater attention
and resources. However, effectively developing Pragmatist-inspired
processes of experimentation, social construction of knowledge, and
anti-foundationalism means embracing all results as worthwhile.

Impacts of Approach

Due to this flexible, open-ended, experimental, and research-based

approach, our original work led to four sub-programs that addressed
specific needs as they developed. In general, the four sub-programs
shifted increasingly towards the design of infrastructure. For example,
from 1996 to 2004, the sub-programs were responsible for the
construction of nearly 14,000 sanitation structures such as toilets,
bathrooms, and soak pits, over 120 water supply systems including
rain-water harvesting, and nearly 400 other projects such as kitchens
designed to prevent the noxious smoke emitted by firewood.36 The
flexible and changing nature of the original program has also enabled
its approach to be effective in helping with rebuilding following
earthquakes in the regions of Gujarat and Kashmir, and after the 2004
Asian tsunami in the state of Andhra Pradesh, on India’s east coast. The
sub-programs are: the Multisector Rehabilitation and Reconstruction
Programme, the Jammu and Kashmir Earthquake Reconstruction
Programme, the Andhra Pradesh Relief to Development Programme,
and the Gujarat Environmental Health Improvement Programme. In the
following sections, I present a brief overview of these programs along
with the most recent publicly available indicators of their impact.

One sub-program, the Multisector Rehabilitation and Reconstruction

Programme, was one of the first to conduct a detailed assessment
of the damage caused to the built environment of the Bhuj region of
Gujarat following the January 2001 earthquake. The program:37

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Discovering the Nexus: Pragmatism, Rural Habitat, and Urbanism

• constructed 300 temporary shelters for low-income families;

• provided technical assistance that led to the construction of 150

seismic-resistant houses and the retrofitting of 200 houses;

• constructed 228 low-cost houses;

• implemented sanitation programs in thirty villages;

• provided necessary assistance and guidance for the

construction of infrastructures (including bathing platforms,
water troughs for cattle, toilets, bathrooms and soak pits, and
school sanitation).

A second sub-program, the Jammu and Kashmir Earthquake

Reconstruction Programme, was developed following the 2005
earthquake of magnitude 7.6 that resulted in significant loss of life
and property in the northern-most region of India (along with areas
in Pakistan and Afghanistan). The hardest hit areas were the districts
of Baramulla and Kupwara, and affected 137 villages, ninety-five of
which were in the Uri block of District Baramulla and another forty-two
in Tangdhar block of District Kupwara, all in the state of Jammu
and Kashmir. The program was involved primarily in training and
construction, as well as reconstruction efforts:38

• it trained ninety-seven masons from seventeen program

villages in earthquake-resistant construction techniques (see
Figure 2.7);

• it reconstructed homes for vulnerable families;

• it provided assistance to homeowners to rebuild earthquake-

resistant homes;

• it reconstructed select public infrastructure (including the

retrofitting of nine classrooms in three middle schools in the
affected areas).

A third sub-program, the Andhra Pradesh Relief-to-Development

Programme, was a three-year (2005–2007) collaborative program
initiated following the devastating 2004 Asian earthquake and tsunami.
The program built on the earlier relief efforts funded by the Canadian

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 Discovering the Nexus: Pragmatism, Rural Habitat, and Urbanism

International Development Agency and the European Commission

Humanitarian Office to restore the livelihoods of affected communities
in the immediate aftermath of the tsunami. The chosen methodology
to meet this purpose was to create empowered and highly motivated
community-based organizations to manage in the face of natural

Figure 2.7 An important feature of the Rural Program continues to be training in improved
construction techniques and materials, such as this example from the earthquake-prone state of
Jammu and Kashmir.
Source: Aga Khan Planning and Building Service India

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Discovering the Nexus: Pragmatism, Rural Habitat, and Urbanism

disasters, alongside high-quality community-based interventions and

fostering linkages with strong institutional partners. This sub-program
focused on disaster preparedness, health and sanitation, and mother-
and-child education through the following actions:39

• it trained 356 community members in basic disaster

preparedness;

• it trained thirty-four members in search and rescue, and first

aid;

• it built three cyclone shelters, two shore-based shelters and a

5.75km evacuation road to withstand extreme weather;

• it built 363 new toilets;

• it educated 3,000 families on health and hygiene practices;

• it improved 146 water sources;

• it introduced child-centered teaching to twelve anganwadi

(“courtyard shelters” that provide health care) centers and one
early childhood center;

• it created Mothers’ Committees to support and sustain

anganwadi centers.

The fourth sub-program, the Gujarat Environmental Health

Improvement Programme, was initiated by the Planning and Building
Service and helped approximately 83,000 people from twenty-five
villages in Jungadh and Patan district in Gujarat during the period
2005 to 2007. The objective of this program was to contribute to
the improvement in health status and living conditions of rural
communities while also establishing a community-managed,
sustainable integrated system for water supply, sanitation, and
hygiene promotion. As in other parts of India, the reality of existing
local conditions was that “water and sanitation problems kill in
large numbers, limiting economic growth, education access and life
opportunities. In India water-borne disease due to the lack of safe
drinking water remain the single largest reason for child mortality
in the below five age-group.”40 To address such conditions, the
sub-program:41

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 Discovering the Nexus: Pragmatism, Rural Habitat, and Urbanism

• built 13,662 environmental sanitation structures (toilets,

bathrooms, soak pits, and compost pits);

• built 120 water supply systems (check-dams, rain-water

harvesting systems, wells, and distribution systems);

• built 367 infrastructure projects (smokeless chullas, cattle

troughs, platforms, and school sanitation).

Concluding Insights

As demonstrated by these impressive figures, the overall strategy of

the Rural Program has made a significant impact on the villages of
India. The framework and approach of the original program contributed
to the success of these subsequent sub-programs. By designing and
developing an overall approach and framework – rather than just
specific projects – the program resulted in several highly effective
sub-programs that have benefitted thousands of community members
over the past twenty-five years. The program developed in a constantly
evolving, flexible, and collaborative fashion that emerged from specific
circumstances and produced stronger projects that gained the trust of
villagers.

Such a multifaceted, grounded, and interdisciplinary approach to

design applies as well to the complex and challenging realities
of cities. Design in this instance is a mode of direct engagement
with these realities by introducing creative ideas into praxis. Three
facets of the Rural Program most clearly correspond to Pragmatist
principles: anti-foundationalism, social construction of knowledge,
and experimentation. The notion of anti-foundationalism suggests
that design strategies can be finely tuned to the changing realities on
the ground, rather than implemented with strict adherence to rigid,
predetermined formulas. While the original mandate of the program
was to design and build houses for the rural poor, field research and
comparable case study analyses led to fundamental shifts towards
addressing higher priority infrastructure challenges in partnership
with residents. For designers and urbanists, the social construction
of knowledge implies that while there may be different points of view
about any one situation, a key strategy in moving forward is to help

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Discovering the Nexus: Pragmatism, Rural Habitat, and Urbanism

construct a collective agreement about possible courses of action.

Such processes of consensus are also important in constantly building
and rebuilding communities and democratic processes. In this way
a democratic community is not something that any policy, diagram,
or mandate can accomplish; it is a process that must be constantly
engaged (Figure 2.8). Accordingly, the Rural Program pursued projects
through often painstakingly negotiated collective agreements based on
local needs and organizational capacities. Furthermore, experimentation
offers the view that the design and implementation of projects,
programs, and policies is a way of testing and fine-tuning creative
ideas that have an impact on people’s lives. The original program
experimented with creative strategies for water supply systems,
sanitation and sewage facilities, construction materials research and

Figure 2.8 An essential aspect of the Rural Program has been constant dialogue and collaboration
with residents, especially women—who play a significant role in the social and economic life of the
villages of Gujarat.
Source: Aga Khan Planning and Building Service India

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 Discovering the Nexus: Pragmatism, Rural Habitat, and Urbanism

skills training – all of which were then applied at much larger scales
with great effect in the sub-programs.

In this manner, Pragmatism offers us deep insights not only into the
Rural Program, but also into initiatives that seek transformation in
cities. Of course, villages and rural areas offer special challenges (e.g.,
lack of infrastructure, lack of access to resources), but also special
advantages (e.g., smaller community sizes, manageable land areas).
The principal insight is that we can obtain a deeper understanding
of design-building-and-transformation processes from initiatives
such as the Rural Program, including its successes and failures. Most
of all, by adopting an approach that works things out in response
to changing circumstances and needs (i.e., anti-foundationalism),
relying on collective knowledge and collaborative action (i.e., social
construction of knowledge), and being open to testing a variety of ideas
(i.e., experimentation), the Rural Program and its sub-programs have
impacted the lives of thousands of residents over the past twenty-five
years. In the next three chapters, I examine more closely the three
conceptual shifts in urbanism that are inspired by Pragmatism and
illustrate them with case studies: beyond objects: city as flux; beyond
intentions: consequences of design; and beyond practice: urbanism as
creative political act.

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3
Beyond Objects: City as Flux
In the realm of practice, a fairly common yet narrow view of urbanism
is as a noun; that is, as a whole project. The project may be a new
city (e.g., Chandigarh), a network of open spaces (e.g., Frederick Law
Olmstead’s Emerald Necklace in Boston), an urban complex (e.g.,
the Olympic village in Beijing), or a master plan (e.g., Masdar in
Abu Dhabi). A broader view of urbanism is as a verb that denotes
engaging with the city as an ongoing process, from the conception of
an urban design initiative, to multiple alternatives and iterations, to an
agreed-upon strategy to refinement, to acceptance, to implementation,
to modification, and beyond. Urbanism is ultimately about the
processes of city-design-and-building1 that possess characteristics of
complexity, constant change, and difficult trade-offs.

Thus, while the city may be designed, built, and experienced as a

three-dimensional material object, the crucial fourth dimension of
time requires that the city be more appropriately conceptualized as
flux; that is, as constant change. Urbanists require a conceptual grasp
of flux in order to shift design thinking, to learn to be flexible, and to
regard projects and strategies as thoughtful and adaptive experiments.
The perspective of city as flux enables urbanists to rethink practice by
redesigning the more deterministic frameworks within which shorter
term adaption occurs, thus allowing urbanists to have a deeper,
long-lasting, and transformative impact on cities.

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 Beyond Objects: City as Flux

Conceptual Shift: From Objects to Flux

What really exists is not things made but things in the making.
Once made, they are dead, and an infinite number of alternative
conceptual decompositions can be used in defining them. But put
yourself in the making by a stroke of intuitive sympathy with the
thing and, the whole range of possible decompositions coming
at once into your possession, you are no longer troubled with the
question of which of them is absolutely true. Reality falls in passing
into conceptual analysis; it mounts in living its own undivided life –
it budges and bourgeons, changes and creates.2

The passage above expresses three major claims of the book A

Pluralistic Universe by Pragmatist philosopher William James, and
indeed much of James’s later philosophy.3 First, he asserts metaphysics
of process; that is, a philosophy of being that is not about things but
about things in the making. Second, he holds that reality is creative,
growing, and living. Third, he asserts that we can achieve an evolving
understanding of reality as opposed to the moribund understanding
often achieved in standard conceptual analysis. This view is in stark
contrast to a long-standing tradition in philosophy whereby stability is
valued in the “Platonic and Aristotelian belief that fixity is a nobler and
worthier thing than change.”4

Analogous thinking in urbanism – in particular, among practitioners

– tends to value the city as a fixed three-dimensional object. The
conventional mindset in which cities are designed has been shaped
by an architectural vision that seeks to articulate urban environments
in minute detail.5 The underlying idea is that a stable framework for
urban life will offer a semblance of continuity in the face-off between
the ever-changing occupants and activities of the urban milieu.
In order to operationalize this approach, urbanists have devised
a variety of techniques, such as design guidelines, form-based
development regulations, signage controls, patterns books, and
design review processes. While such an approach often produces
visionary thinking and stunning visualizations, it nonetheless posits an
end-point for a phenomenon (i.e., the city) that is actually constantly
changing, and thereby limits a multitude of possibilities in its further
evolution.

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Beyond Objects: City as Flux

The dominant thinking among conventional practitioners about

urbanism is in terms of architecture writ large, which long pre-dates
the emergence of professionals who call themselves urban designers.6
For example, the projects of Sixtus V in Rome had a powerful influence
on formal concepts of the material city. The aspiration of creating
a grand baroque ensemble – wide streets and avenues, with vistas
across the city, lined by controlled façades, terminating in monuments
or squares or public buildings – dominated urban design for more
than two centuries. The seminal example of this phenomenon is Baron
Haussmann’s Paris, with its broad, elegant boulevards and vistas
artfully focused on monuments that became a model for urban life as a
work of art, an esthetic experience, and a public spectacle. Many of his
emulators were less interested in the functional aspects of his program
than in the urbanity and worldliness it conferred on their cities.7 In the
United States, the first full-blown example of an architectural image
applied to an entire city was Daniel Burnham and Edward Bennett’s
Plan for Chicago of 1909, which was representative of the City Beautiful
movement.8

While the conceptual shift implied by James’s quote at the beginning

of this chapter suggests that we view the city as flux rather than as a
fixed object, a perceptual shift is suggested by another passage from A
Pluralistic Universe: that our understanding of the city should also be
living and flexible rather than fixed. In other words, not only is reality
constantly changing, but our perceptions of it are also changing:

What, then, are the peculiar features in the perceptual flux which
the conceptual translation so fatally leaves out? The essence of
life is its continuously changing character; but our concepts are
all discontinuous and fixed, and the only mode of making them
coincide with life is arbitrarily supposing positions of arrest therein.
With such arrests our concepts may be made congruent. But these
concepts are not parts of reality, not real positions taken by it, but
suppositions rather, notes taken by ourselves, and you can no more
dip up the substance of reality with them than you can dip up water
with a net, however finely meshed.9

A few scholars of urbanism have made a similar argument regarding our

understanding of cities, most notably the urban historian Spiro Kostof:

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 Beyond Objects: City as Flux

The tendency all too often is to see urban form as a finite thing, a
closed thing, a complicated object. I want to stress what we know
instead to be the case – that a city, however perfect its initial shape,
is never complete, never at rest. Thousands of witting and unwitting
acts every day alter its lines in ways that are perceptible only over
a certain stretch of time. City walls are pulled down and filled in;
once rational grids are slowly obscured; a slashing diagonal is
run through close-grained residential neighborhoods; railroad
tracks usurp cemeteries and water-fronts; wars, fires, and freeway
connectors annihilate city cores.10

Furthermore, while the literature on urbanism from a design and

practice perspective has been woefully lacking on the concept of
city as flux, scholars from other fields have forged ahead with their
own investigations of such shifts. For example, in 1915, the biologist,
sociologist, and pioneering British town planner Patrick Geddes argued
that “a city is more than a place in space, it is a drama in time.”11
Alternatively, the geographer James Vance focused on what he called
“urban morphogenesis – the creation and subsequent transformation
of city form.”12 Although urban morphology is often taken simply to
mean the physical form of the city, Vance addressed the questions of
process: how a society creates and transforms the physical fabric of
the city. In his book, Capturing the Horizon, Vance follows changes in
modern transportation technology, with successive chapters on canals,
railroads, urban transport, maritime navigation, and aviation. For each
of these innovations, Vance proposes a six-stage historical cycle of
experimentation, initiation, amplification and extension, generalization,
universalization, and retrenchment.

Another geographer, David Harvey, is even more explicit about

describing the city as flux when he discusses the process of the
“destruction, invasion, and restructuring of places on an unprecedented
scale,” caused by “changing material practices of production,
consumption, information flow, and communication coupled with the
radical reorganization of space relations and of time horizons within
capitalist development.”13 Harvey writes about how technological
innovations in production and advanced differentiation in consumption
speed the pace at which commodities, including buildings, are
produced, junked, and reproduced.14 In fact, early on in his career

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Beyond Objects: City as Flux

he wrote of the city as a means, rather than an end in itself, due to

production driven by motives of capital accumulation: “The urban
process implies the creation of a material physical infrastructure for
production, circulation, exchange and consumption.”15

At a global scale, sociologist Manuel Castells complements Harvey’s

analysis when he describes cities as spaces of flows:

The new space of a world capitalist system, combining the

international and industrial modes of development, is a space of
variable geometry, formed by locations hierarchically ordered in
a continuously changing network of flows: flows of capital, labor,
elements of production, commodities, information, decisions, and
signals.16

Interestingly, analysis from traditions outside Marxism also identifies

with the city as flux. For example, professional observers of the world
of contemporary real estate development describe urban real estate as
a process that is flexible and changing:

Here colossal towers are merely placeholders, temporary

arrangements of future debris. New York lives by a philosophy of
creative destruction. The only thing permanent about real estate is
a measured patch of earth and the column of air above it. The rest
is disposable.”17

The question arises, then, of how – exactly – this concept of “city as

flux” manifests in the material city. Kostof provides a vivid description
of this physical manifestation:

The spatial order cast by houses, monuments, and solid city walls
is gradually subverted by generations of seemingly innocuous
tinkering, as in the case of Rome, or it’s deliberately revamped
through massive interventions, like those of Haussmann’s Paris. In
recent times, modern warfare’s generous capacity to destroy has
been seized as an opportunity to experiment with the latest trends
in urban design: lacking a war, mass demolitions can be legislated
to similar ends.18

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Furthermore, “far less dramatic is the incremental transformation of city

form through the thousands of daily adjustments to its fabric due to the
owners and users of private property.”19 Similarly, in her book, Built for
Change, Anne Moudon documents the millions of modifications to the
vernacular architecture of San Francisco, a phenomenon of relentless
urban modification at a micro-scale that has continued for centuries in
some of the oldest cities in the world, especially in Asia.20

Several scholars of urbanism, such as Gary Hack, describe flux as it

appears in the city, rather than the phenomenon of city as flux:

New technologies have emerged which dematerialize previously

stable aspects of the environment. It is possible to construct
entirely pixilated facades of buildings that are changeable in
an instant; these can be programmed for artistic or commercial
purposes. Vegetated facades of buildings can be planted to change
seasonally and blur the line between structure and landscape.
Transit vehicles can become gigantic mobile billboards, and
pixilated billboards are towed through city streets, avoiding any
restrictions on signage. City streets are transformed by weekend
festivals and events, and become a stage for city life. In an era of
short takes, the constant search for the sensory stimulation and
dominance of the visual channel, flux presents a powerful tool for
shaping impressions of places.21

While the valuable work of Hack and others raises the issue of temporal
and spatial scale of flux within the city, our focus in this chapter
conceptualizes how entire cities constantly change over time, with a
temporal scale of decades or centuries, rather than weeks or months.

Some theorists and practitioners have also attempted to conceptualize

this more active and long-term perspective of the whole city as an
evolving entity in time. For example, in the book A New Theory of
Urban Design, Christopher Alexander and his colleagues propose a
generative design method focused less on the specification of a final
form through schematic planning and more on the stepwise process by
which a form might emerge from the evolutionary actions of a group
of collaborators.22 They prescribe seven rules of growth, including
piecemeal growth, growth of larger wholes, visions, positive urban

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Beyond Objects: City as Flux

space, layout of large buildings, construction, and formation of centers.

While the rule of piecemeal growth governs the increment of growth,
the distribution of spatial elements, and the diversity of land uses, the
rule of the growth of larger wholes governs the way the emergent
wholes are identified and reinforced, such that they become large-
scale features (e.g., main streets, public squares) of the material city. In
Alexander’s theory, these features emerge from a sequential process,
as they have done historically. However, Alexander himself argued later
that the book’s focus was still too heavily on the formal spatial product
and not enough about the processes of urbanism, such as social
interaction, site assessment, financial arrangements, or construction
sequencing.23

Scholars of organizations have more fully embraced this conceptual

shift by arguing that

change must not be thought of as a property of organization.

Rather, organization must be understood as an emergent property
of change. Change is ontologically prior to organization – it is
the condition of possibility for organization … Organization is an
attempt to order the intrinsic flux of human action, to channel it
towards certain ends, to give it a particular shape … At the same
time, organization is a pattern that is constituted, shaped, emerging
from change … While organization aims at stemming change, it is
also the outcome of change.24

This analysis is strikingly similar to Harvey’s argument about cities and

circuits of capital, in which the city is largely the outcome of ongoing
change in systems of capitalist production. In addition, we have to
account for other processes that are responsible for the changing
nature of cities, including political decision-making, ways in which
policies are formulated and carried out, and the evolution of social
and cultural norms, such as how cities are perceived as places of
opportunity and possibility more than as places of risk and danger.

What emerges out of this discussion is that those who work

towards urban transformation require a concept of the city as flux
as ongoing processes and changes, a stream of interactions, and a
flow of situated initiatives. One way to ground this concept is in the

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practices of urbanists and other urban actors, emerging out of their

accommodations to and experiments with everyday contingencies,
breakdowns, exceptions, opportunities, and unintended consequences
they encounter. The point is for urbanists to actively conceptualize
and continually engage with cities as flux in addition to their three-
dimensional materiality. The challenge in getting to this point is
two-fold: first, how to reconcile it with a human need to perceive
stability in our worlds, and second, to reconcile the urbanists’ need,
stemming often from their design training, to view interventions in
primarily fixed, material terms. Analyses of the following case studies
demonstrate the various ways in which this may be accomplished: the
Olympic Village in Barcelona, the Al-Azhar Park in Cairo, and the MIT
Experimental Design Studio in Boston.

Olympic Village, Barcelona

Even though the design of the Olympic Village in Barcelona is usually

regarded as a one-time designed three-dimensional set of urban objects
completed in 1992, it is in fact part of a much longer term process of
urban transformation of the city of Barcelona. Two dates are particularly
influential: 1888, when the World’s Fair was used to radically redesign a
part of the city, a legacy of leveraging international events to radically
redesign the city that continues to this day; and 1976, when the General
Metropolitan Plan inaugurated a longer-term, more spatially dispersed
and formalized planning process. The Olympic Village project was part
of an overall preparation for the 1992 Olympic Games that focused on
four principal sites connected by a large ring-road improvement, the
Cinturó de Ronda:25

• The Olympic Ring on Montjuic (which hosted the major events),

to the southwest of the old town.

• The Olympic Village and Port in Poblenou, to the northeast.

• Val d’Hebron to the northwest among the hillsides.

• An area along the Avinguda Diagonal, well to the southwest of

the city center.

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Beyond Objects: City as Flux

The master plan for the Olympic Village was prepared by the private
firm, MBM Puidomènech, with principals Oriol Bohigas, David Mackay,
and Albert Puigdomènech, and implemented by a public firm created
in 1986, the Vila Olímpica Societat Anònima.26 When first completed in
1992, the Olympic Village was christened Nova Icària, but today the
project is more commonly known as Vila Olímpica (Olympic Village),
and the larger area within which it is located is called Poblenou.

The site chosen for the athletes’ housing was in the city’s abandoned
industrial port, eventually giving Barcelona’s residents unaccustomed
but desired access to the sea. Furthermore, Poblenou was an old
industrial area that appeared in the 19th century with industrial sites
and working-class housing, and was one of the centers of the industrial
revolution in Barcelona and in Spain.27 Before the Olympic Games,
the Poblenou district had a preponderance of disused factories and
warehouses, and the demolition of buildings, removal of railway
tracks, and relocation of the affected residents all led to its spectacular
transformation. Poblenou is now a new neighborhood inside the city of
Barcelona.28

Designing the Olympic Village

The ostensible reason for the Olympic Village was to construct 2,000
apartments to house around 15,000 athletes and officials, and to create
an adjoining port facility for the sailing and boating competitions.29
However, it was also primarily seen as an opportunity to rebuild a
dilapidated part of the city and to redress a section of the Mediterranean
waterfront that was polluted and bereft of beaches.30 An underused
railroad yard in Poblenou with some support infrastructure for coastal
shipping was expropriated and cleared between 1987 and 1989, leaving
one rail line running along the coast. The city’s sewer and storm water
run-off systems were also extensively upgraded and expanded around
the site to eliminate flooding and water pollution. About 3 miles (5
kilometers) of beach were re-created, taking advantage of the littoral sand
drift, through a series of groins jutting out into the sea. Almost half the
site was dedicated to parks, the majority of which were concentrated
behind the beach along the coastline. The Ronda del Litoral, part of
the circumferential highway improvement, was partially buried behind the

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 Beyond Objects: City as Flux

beaches or sunken in trenches crossed by pedestrian bridges, in order to

maximize the connection between the city and the sea.

There are three major components of the Olympic Village: housing and
commercial land uses located in close proximity to each other; a variety
of urban, waterfront, and landscaped open spaces; and upgraded
infrastructures, especially for transportation, water, and sewage
systems (see Figure 3.1). These are described in the following sections.

Figure 3.1 Plan of the Olympic Village which shows the new the port, marina, and beaches on the
right, the housing designed around courtyards in the middle of the image, and the many parks and
public spaces in between the two.
Courtesy: Architectural Record magazine

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Beyond Objects: City as Flux

The 2,000 apartments built to accommodate the athletes were

constructed by two public–private development companies and by 1996
all of them had been sold.31 An interesting aspect of the housing was
that a larger than usual percentage of the apartments were bought by
families that included a person with a physical disability. The Village
was especially attractive for such families since it had also served as
accommodation for the Paralympics and the entire area was accessible
to those with disabilities. A study conducted after the Olympics also
revealed that nearly 6,000 residents, most of whom were younger and
more affluent than the city average, now live in the Village.32 However,
when I visited in 2010 and spent two full days in the Olympic Village,
my firsthand experience suggested that most of the residents were of
relatively modest means and included families with children.

The residential blocks combined formal arrangements of modern

linear apartments with more traditional perimeter blocks. Most of the
approximately forty-eight buildings by thirty-eight local architecture
firms on about 150 acres conform to the volumetric specifications
of the master plan by MBM Puidomènech.33 All are around seven
storeys in height, sufficient to give an urban scale to adjacent streets
and in keeping with earlier building within the Eixample. The Eixample
is a district of Barcelona between the old city and what were once
surrounding small towns. Designed by the visionary planner Ildefons
Cerdà, the Eixample was constructed in the 19th and early 20th
centuries with long straight streets, a strict grid pattern crossed by wide
avenues, and square blocks with chamfered corners. In contrast to the
Eixample, however, most urban blocks in the Olympic Village are very
open, accommodating landscaping in a variety of vegetated and paved
formats (see Figure 3.2). Within these parameters a variety of housing
emerged.

Along with the housing, the Olympic Village now contains over
200 stores and services.34 Among the shops is the Centre de la
Vila, a shopping center with a food store and twelve-screen cinema
complex. The area includes twenty-six food shops, thirteen clothes
and shoe shops, and twenty-four household goods shops. The
remaining thirty-six shops cover a diverse range of products. The
service companies include restaurants and corporate, financial, and
professional services. Overall, these activities generate a daily flow of

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 Beyond Objects: City as Flux

Figure 3.2 As seen in this image, the vast majority of the new apartment buildings in the Olympic
Village are mid-rise buildings around courtyards that work well in the Mediterranean climate.
Source: Aseem Inam

around 5,000 workers into the area, including the 3,000 employed in
the Torre Mapfre office building, which is one of the towers overlooking
the Port. The Torre Mapfre is one of the twin 100-meter tall towers (the
other is a hotel) designed as a gateway to mark the meeting of the
city with the sea (see Figure 3.3). Thus, the Olympic Village is truly an
urban neighborhood with a preponderance of housing integrated with
courtyards and landscaping and a mix of retail and commercial uses
that serve as magnets for employment.

The second major component of the Olympic Village, open spaces,

is also a microcosm of the historic tradition of Barcelona.35 There are

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Beyond Objects: City as Flux

Figure 3.3 The waterfront promenade of the Olympic Village marked by the iconic fish sculpture by
the architect Frank Gehry and the two tall towers in the background, with the hotel on the left and
the office building on the right.
Source: Aseem Inam

boulevards, passeigs (avenues), urban gardens, sculptures, and an

abundance of street furniture that is also found in other parts of the
city. The parks and gardens system was conceived on a two-fold basis:
the larger public parks that serve the entire city are situated between
the seafront houses and the coast (see Figure 3.4), and the smaller
interior gardens for the use of residents are located within the blocks
of buildings, and are owned semi-public spaces by the residents’
associations of each block.36

The beaches extend 3 miles (5 kilometers) along the southeastern

edge of the Olympic Village, with a series of piers protecting the sand

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 Beyond Objects: City as Flux

Figure 3.4 The linear park between the housing to the left and the waterfront promenade further
to the right provide generous public open spaces that neighborhood residents access on a daily
basis.
Source: Aseem Inam

from the dominant ocean stream. The Olympic harbor has a capacity
for about 1,000 boats in the water and borders a wide pedestrian
seafront promenade with cafés, restaurants, and other facilities.37 The
coastal park is new and generally well aligned with differing conditions
of urban street edge, meandering passeig, and the beach front itself.
Since 1993, the beaches on the Olympic Village seafront have become
one of the city’s favorite attractions (see Figure 3.5). The Nova Icària,
Bogatell, and Mar Bella beaches are visited each year by more than
three million of the five million who go to Barcelona’s beaches, among
other reasons, for their proximity to the Metro stations.38 There are also
striking opportunities for views of the coastline and the edges of the

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Beyond Objects: City as Flux

city, which are novel features for Barcelona. One of the most interesting
landscapes within the overall scheme is Poblenou Park and the La
Mar Bella sports center at the eastern end of the Village. The center
housed the badminton competitions during the Games, and now hosts
Poblenou’s district library and archive.

The third major component of the Olympic effort was investment

in infrastructure, such as the Cinturó de Ronda and the one with
perhaps the largest overall impact on Barcelona.39 This new urban
highway was partially buried behind the beach or sunk in trenches
criss-crossed with pedestrian bridges that overlook the surrounding
greenery. The construction of this circular highway around the city was
a collaborative exercise between traffic engineers, architects, and other
associated disciplines, rather than the usual pattern of coping with and

Figure 3.5 The newly constructed beaches of the Olympic Village benefit the entire city due to
excellent public transit connectivity and surrounding retail amenities such as cafés and restaurants.
Source: Aseem Inam

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 Beyond Objects: City as Flux

embellishing a traffic artery once it was under construction or already

built. This collaboration produced many imaginative and sometimes
stunning results through design strategies that combined sensitive road
engineering, well-scaled landscape architecture, and accommodation of
communal facilities into usable public space (see Figure 3.6).

In addition to the Cinturó de Ronda, two other major citywide

infrastructural improvements for the Olympic Games were the
modification and extension of the airport and the telecommunications
tower set on top of the Collserola mountain range, overlooking
Barcelona. In addition, before construction of the Village could begin,
a rail line along the coast was dismantled and another one buried. The
citywide sewage and storm water run-off system was modernized and
expanded within the site to prevent floods and halt water pollution.40

Overall, the Olympic Village best epitomized the strategy for urbanism
in Barcelona.41 In previous Olympic Games the village was built

Figure 3.6 A pedestrian passage from the housing towards the waterfront over the Cinturó de
Ronda that is also integrated with the surrounding parks.
Source: Aseem Inam

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Beyond Objects: City as Flux

outside the city, but Barcelona planners brought it into the existing
city, to replace obsolete factories, reinvent the former industrial zone,
and open the entire city to the seafront. Barcelona had for centuries
been isolated from the port that furnished its living, and the strategic
placement of a substantial new quarter muscling its way to the sea
reclaimed the waterfront and reversed Barcelona’s genteel avoidance
of the Mediterranean. Existing sewage lines were rechanneled, the
water made swimmable, the beaches cleared of refuse, and the shanties
demolished, including some much-loved old beach-side restaurants.
Many critics have noticed that the project, in retrospect, did not fully
take advantage of opportunities to directly benefit the poor in the
area.42 However, it is also clear that overall the city and all of its citizens
have gained tremendously from the redesigned public amenities, new
waterfront, parks, housing, and the increased tourism and economic
growth spurred by the international image of a transformed Barcelona.
A main feature of the Olympic Village development was the creation of
new public spaces that have been embraced and enlivened by different
urban populations from all over the city (see Figure 3.7). 43

Figure 3.7 The ripple effects of the Olympic Village design and process continue to be felt in the city
as flux, for example in this large urban park built on the periphery of the Village after the Olympics
with open views towards the ocean.
Source: Aseem Inam

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 Beyond Objects: City as Flux

Apart from the physical and object-oriented aspects of the design

strategy, what made the urbanism so effective was also the design and
management of its overall process. For example, the master planners
urged the government to exert organizational control over private
developers in different ways. Thus, the City of Barcelona either bought
up the land and gave fifty- to eighty-year leases (thereby avoiding
speculation on the land itself and, as owner, exercising strict control
over what is built), or controlled the development of land it did not own
by setting up planning boards.44 Furthermore, planners resisted the
typical Olympic planning mindset that results in overdevelopment by
focusing instead on strategic zones where the development would build
on the city’s existing structure and by concentrating resources in the
areas with the greatest need.45 Those involved in this city-design-and-
building process contributed to a city that was already in the making
rather than try to create something entirely new.

There were multiple impacts of these design strategies. One measure of

the impact of the Olympic Village was its investment, $2 billion (out of a
total cost of all Olympic Games facilities of $7 billion), which resulted in
stimulating around $8 billion more in public and private investment
in Barcelona. A second measure is that as a result of the Olympic Village,
Barcelona now has a well-serviced and viable recreational area on the
Mediterranean, close to the center of town.46 A third, less visible but
nonetheless significant impact of the Games was the upgrading of the
urban technology and telecommunications systems necessary to host
the world’s media. These improvements have had major implications for
the further development of the city as an administrative center.

Olympic Village as a Hundred-Year Process

The conventional view of the Olympic Village as a set of discrete

objects is reinforced by two factors. First, in 1999 the Royal Institute
of British Architects awarded Barcelona its Gold Medal, the first time
a city had been recognized by an award normally given to individual
designers. This was taken as confirmation of the City Council’s centrality
in pursuing innovative commissions in urbanism and public buildings,
mix of eye-catching landmark projects, small-scale improvements
to plazas and street corners, and the team work between politicians

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and urbanists.47 Second, while the originality, scope, ambition, and

implementation of Barcelona’s urbanism were remarkable, much of the
urban fabric of the Olympic Village consists of housing and open space
that is modest and even banal. Critics focused on the three-dimensional
materiality of the project by complaining about the monotony of the
unvarying height and horizontal extensions of the buildings and that
there are not more monumental and spectacular structures.48

However, an analysis via the concept of city as flux reveals that

rather than just a designed and completed set of objects, the Olympic
Village is in fact integral to a specific type of urbanism process that
stretches as far back as 1888. Barcelona had twice before harnessed the
energy inspired by international events to take major steps in urban
development.49 The 1888 World’s Fair, sited in the former precinct of
the Ciutadella Park, gave the city the confidence to expand beyond its
medieval walls, and provided the impetus to execute finally an urban
plan designed in 1859 by Ildefons Cerda. Then, for the World’s Fair
of 1929, the city converted the mountain of Montjuic into a cultural
park, and in the process connected the Cerda-planned central city
to the surrounding villages. The World’s Fair acted as a showcase of
Barcelona’s status as the prominent manufacturing center in Spain,
while the entire city benefitted from a system of avenues, parks,
buildings, and plazas built at this time.50 Thus, the City of Barcelona
has mobilized resources repeatedly in order to keep in shape for
international events and competitions for over a hundred years: the
1888 Universal Exhibition, the 1929 Universal Exhibition, the 1952
Eucaristical Congress, and the 1992 Olympic Games.51

Furthermore, in order to fully understand the design, building, and

impact of the Olympic Village, we must place it in the context of what
Juli Esteban, former Director of the Office of Urban Planning Studies
of the Barcelona City Council, calls the larger urban project behind
the transformation of Barcelona.52 Esteban considers 1976, the year
in which the General Metropolitan Plan (Pla General Metropolità or
PGM in Catalonian) was approved, as the starting point of the formal
planning process. The PGM of 1976 covered Barcelona and twenty-six
surrounding municipalities, and had its origins in an even earlier
1953 plan that was the first proposal to plan for the metropolitan
region.53 The PGM proposed a new legal planning framework that

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included a clear organization of public spaces, the road network, and

a considerable quantity of land set aside for public facilities and green
spaces. The PGM has been modified several times over the past five
decades but remains in force today.

Another date that stands out in Barcelona’s formal planning process is

1979, which was the beginning of democratic municipal management
after decades of the dictatorship of General Francisco Franco, with the
following year seeing the appointment of Oriol Bohigas as Director
of Planning for Barcelona. Bohigas immediately began the process of
planning and design for the newly acquired land. He served as a
catalyst in bringing together a large number of young architects who
ended up designing almost two hundred parks, plazas, schools, and
other public facilities.54 Under Socialist mayor Narcìs Serra, from 1978
through 1982, more than a hundred public spaces, often complemented
with sculpture or murals, were strategically planted in the loosely
organized outskirts to create focal monuments and confer an
identifiable sense of place. It was a practical, here-and-now, hands-on
program of small urban actions, done with available means in the
feasible spaces, without any yearning for a rarefied idealistic utopia.55
It was during this period of urban change – in 1982 – that the first
proposal for hosting the Olympics was drawn up, and then in 1986 the
International Olympic Committee selected the city of Barcelona to host
the 1992 Olympics.

Long-Term Investments in the City as Flux

Barcelona illustrates what may be achieved by way of Games-related

urban regeneration, with planners ploughing 83 per cent of the
total expenditure for the 1992 Olympics into urban improvements
rather than into sport. The Metro system was extended, the coastal
railway rerouted, the airport redesigned and expanded, and the
telecommunications system modernized. There were also a total of
4,500 new apartments provided in different locations (including in
the Olympic Village), five major nodes of new office development,
extensive investment in the cultural sector (especially museums), and
5,000 new hotel rooms. Significantly, too, the public gained access to
3 miles (5 kilometers) of coastline and new beaches.56 In fact, scholars

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have stated that the Olympic Games of 1992 is “probably the best
example of the role of the Olympics as a catalyst for urban change and
renewal.”57

After the Olympics, tourism and other related service businesses were
on the rise, bringing many visitors and sojourners, attracted by its rising
reputation for urban vitality, amenity, and chic.58 Cultural life had also
improved correspondingly, especially with the completion of several
major venues after the Olympics were over. The palpable identity of
Barcelona was now at an all-time high. The increase in the international
prestige of the city caused by the recognition of its management
capacity was a change after the Olympics, along with recognition as
a place with privileged conditions for quality of life and as a place
of opportunity for international investors. Using the advantages
of this new position meant giving necessary attention to the main
infrastructure with Europe and the rest of the world: the airport, the Port,
and the planned high-speed train. At the same time, the planning for the
Olympics, especially the Olympic Village, helped satisfy the demands of
the Federació d’Associacions de Veins de Barcelona, a formal umbrella
for all the neighborhood-based groups across the city, for more and
better public spaces, environmental improvements, and so forth.59

While the Olympic Village project excelled in many ways, it also fell
short of its transformative potential. The economic crisis leading up to
Barcelona’s 1986 nomination to host the Olympic games had an effect
on the city’s ability to follow through on some projects. For example,
even though former Barcelona Mayor Pasqual Maragall had promised
that the Village would be the site of public or subsidized housing, private
sector pressure in both releasing land for preparation and buying it for
development squeezed the City Council’s budget to an extent that the new
housing had to be offered on the open market.60 While it was the intention
of the municipality that at least some of the apartments would be sold
below market price, they were in fact sold well above the average price in
the rest of the city due to private sector market pressures.61 At the same
time, the public/private partnership was instrumental for the success of the
whole operation. Whereas most of the real estate investment was private,
the design and the management of the urbanism for the Olympics was
mostly public, which is important to point out in an atmosphere of general
discredit about the capability of local government. The design team for the

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Olympic Village also deserves due credit in attempting to engage with the
city as an ongoing process. The master plan by MBM Puidomènech was
followed by a second stage of design at the scale of the block by the teams
of Amado & Domènech, Bach & Mora, Bonell & Rius, and MBM before
individual buildings were assigned to architects. The aim was to reproduce
in record time the variety and coherence of a traditional city.62 The resulting
urban fabric of the material city combines traditional boulevard housing
with such amenities as abundant light, air, and open space.

Al-Azhar Park, Cairo

The Al-Azhar Park is a 74-acre (30-hectare) public park located in

the eastern part of Cairo, a city of eighteen million people, near the
Al-Azhar Mosque. For hundreds of years, household garbage and
building debris accumulated at the Park’s site, creating the 130-foot
(40-meter)-high Al-Darrassa Hills. The Park cost $30 million and
opened to the public in 2005. Sasaki Associates of Boston carried
out the preliminary master planning studies, and the final landscape
architecture design was the work of the firm Sites International of
Cairo, with Maher Stino and Laila El-Masry Stino as the principals. The
three buildings in the Park (i.e., Citadel View Restaurant, Lakeside Café
and the entrance building) were the objects of a competition between
seven international and Egyptian architectural firms. The Citadel View
Restaurant was designed by Egyptian architects Rami el-Dahan and
Soheir Farid, while the Lakeside Café project was awarded to Serge
Santelli of Paris.

The aim of the Park design was to provide a lively contrast between flat
and hilly sections of the site, formal and informal planting patterns, as
well as lush vegetation in focal areas of the plain and dryer stretches
on the slope towards the city.63 The Park’s central feature is a formal
linear promenade, 26 feet (8 meters) wide that runs along the entire
length of the Park with a water channel in the middle.64 It is anchored
by the Hilltop Restaurant and Café on its northern end and is aligned
with a spectacular view of the historic Citadel at its southern end, where
another restaurant, the Lake Café, sits slightly off axis. As one walks
along the promenade beneath an allée of royal palms, one passes a
number of orthogonal gardens with water runnels and fountains that

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Figure 3.8 Al-Azhar Park’s design marries inspirations from the rich traditions of Islamic gardens
with an embrace of its urbanity, for example, via promenades and views that are oriented towards
the historic monuments of Cairo.
Source: © Aga Khan Trust for Culture

are inspired by traditional Islamic gardens such as the Alhambra in

Spain and the Mughal gardens of India (see Figure 3.8). This axis then
bends towards the minarets of the old city and leads to a small lake
on the large lower plateau of the site. A network of informal pathways
surrounds the more formal areas and leads through all levels and
corners of the site. Together, the various components of the Park design
provide the visitor with a rich and varied experience.

Evolution and Adaptability of the Design Process

The design evolution of the Park project, as described in the

following sections, is significant for understanding its outcomes
and continuing impact. It also illustrates a key facet of the city as

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flux: a city-design-and-building process that is adaptive to changing

circumstances and new discoveries. The origins of the project may be
traced to November 1984, when the Aga Khan Award for Architecture
organized a conference called “The Expanding Metropolis: Coping
with the Urban Growth of Cairo,” and where His Highness the Aga
Khan announced his decision to donate a park to the citizens of Cairo.
The Aga Khan is a spiritual leader, investor, and philanthropist whose
ancestors founded al-Qahira (i.e., Cairo) during the Fatimid period in
973. The vehicle for the Park project is the Aga Khan Trust for Culture, a
private, non-denominational philanthropic foundation founded in 1988
and based in Geneva.

The implementation of the initial Park project prepared in the 1980s

was delayed, first, because the former occupants of the Al-Darassa
site (i.e., a horse compound of the Cairo police and a storage site of
a major contractor) had to be moved, and then because the area, as
the last vacant space in central Cairo, was reclaimed by the General
Organisation for Greater Cairo Water Supply for the construction of
three large water tanks, to be constructed with funding from the United
States Agency for International Development.65

In 1990, a new start for the project was made based on a protocol
between the Cairo Governorate and the Aga Khan Trust that required
the integration of the water tanks as part of the design.66 The time prior
to the completion of the water tanks in 1995 was used to develop a new
master plan by Sasaki Associates, including a thorough investigation
of the complicated soil conditions and horticultural tests, and for the
operation of a preliminary on-site nursery. In 1996, when the Aga
Khan Trust took over the site from the Cairo Governorate, its Historic
Cities Support Programme had also developed a more comprehensive
approach to urban rehabilitation. Earthworks and master grading of the
site began in 1997 while the detailed design of the Park continued with
a view to taking best advantage of the site’s opportunities.

The design-and-building process of the Park itself was rife with

challenges that had to be overcome with ingenuity by the designers and
a highly adaptive process of design.67 Technical issues included highly
saline soils and the incorporation in the Park of three large freshwater
reservoirs for the city of Cairo, each 260 feet (80 meters) in diameter

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and 45 feet (14 meters) deep. Builders had to clear the 500-year-old
accumulation of fill and debris from the site (see Figure 3.9). The
massive excavation required moving the equivalent of more than
80,000 truckloads of rubble and soil. The soil on the site was extremely
unpredictable and unstable in many places because, unlike landfills
where the garbage is constantly compacted with heavy machinery, it
was simply dumped there. Thus, raft foundations or pilings were placed
beneath buildings in the Park, and the top layer of soil was excavated
and replaced with 2 to 3 meters of sand with very low salinity. A clay
liner and below-grade drainage system prevented irrigation water from
percolating into the soils below and causing them to settle.

The implementation of the Park design required innovation and

adaptability in other ways. According to Maher Stino, one of the

Figure 3.9 The site of Al-Azhar Park is extremely challenging because it was a garbage dump in the
middle of a dense, historic, and low-income neighborhood of Cairo, which makes its design all the
more remarkable.
Source: © Aga Khan Trust for Culture

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principal landscape architects, “almost everything installed in the park

was custom made by local artisans and craftsmen,” from the benches
to the light fixtures to the bollards.68 With very few large landscape
architecture projects happening in Egypt, “there were no landscape
furniture manufacturers in Egypt or professional plant nurseries to
supply the plant palette we wanted,” he explained.69 They were able to
turn these challenges into opportunities by establishing off-site plant
nurseries on land supplied by the American University in Cairo and
by conducting site furniture workshops in the adjacent Darb Al-Ahmar
neighborhood.

Spatial Products, Temporal Processes, and Deep Impacts

The first sign that this was going to be much more than a
conventionally defined park project was due to the historic nature of the
neighborhood. During the massive earthwork and preparation of the
site’s western slope that descends towards the historic Darb Al-Ahmar
neighborhood, crews uncovered Cairo’s medieval Ayyubid Wall, built
by the ruler Saladin between 1176 and 1183 to defend the city from
European crusaders. The Wall extends for about a mile (1.5 kilometers),
has a number of towers, galleries, and entrances still intact, and is
considered one of the most important archaeological discoveries in
Islamic Egypt in the past decade (see Figure 3.10). Restoration of the
discovered Wall began in 1999 until the end of 2007, and original gates
serve as a major entrance to the park from Darb Al-Ahmar.

The most significant temporal and spatial flux of the Al-Azhar Park
project is found in Darb Al-Ahmar. Darb Al-Ahmar is a neighborhood
on the western edge of the Park, with a population of about 100,000
residents.70 Darb Al-Ahmar suffers from characteristics found
throughout Cairo, such as low family incomes, deteriorating housing
core, continued wear and tear of historic monuments and structures,
lack of regular upkeep of city infrastructure, paucity of public
investment, and the absence of essential community facilities and
services. On the other hand, the district possesses significant strengths
and opportunities, such as an integration of multiple land uses that
are pedestrian oriented, an outstanding collection of medieval Islamic
buildings and monuments, a dense residential core, an important

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Figure 3.10 What began as a landscape architecture project evolved into a historic preservation
project with the discovery of the Ayyubid Wall, seen on the right with Al-Azhar Park on the left.
Source: Caryn Sweeney

pool of skilled workers and small enterprises, and a well-established

community, with over 60 percent of residents having lived in the area
for thirty years or more.71 The neighborhood is densely built up and has
many artisans with small wood and metal workshops adjacent to their
homes. Sixty-five registered historic monuments and several hundred
unregistered historic buildings that are more than 200 years old line its
streets.

The Aga Khan Trust realized that the Park and neighborhood were
inseparable as the Park project evolved, according to Seif El-Rashidi, the
former head of the urban planning of the Trust in Cairo.72 As a result, for

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example, views into the neighborhood, especially of its minarets, shape

the experience for Park visitors. In addition, in collaboration with the
World Monuments Fund and other funding agencies such as the Ford
Foundation and the Swiss-Egyptian Development Fund, the Trust funded
the restoration and preservation of a number of key Islamic monuments
in the area, including the 14th-century Umm al Sultan Shaban
mosque, the Khayer Bek complex (encompassing a 13th-century
palace, a mosque, and an Ottoman house), and the Darb Shoughlan
School. For these projects, the Trust established strategic partnerships
with the Supreme Council of Antiquities, which is the custodian of
all monuments in Egypt, and the Ministry of Awqaf (i.e., religious
endowments), the actual owner and user of many monuments.73

The fluctuating nature of the Park project is further reflected in other

historic restoration initiatives that emerged out of these first efforts.
While the restoration team was working on Umm al-Sultan Sha’ban and
Khayer Bek mosques, residents approached it to ask if the 14th-century
Aslam al-Silahdar mosque could be restored as well.74 As that project
approached completion, it became clear that its dilapidated public
square, Aslam Square, and the shops opposite it also needed help. The
Aga Khan Trust convinced skeptical shopkeepers to participate in the
project by paying for their estimated three-month income that would be
lost during the construction period. Then, the opening of Aslam Square
caught the attention of government officials who encouraged the Trust
to do more, so the next steps of the project include the establishment
of the Museum of Historic Cairo, a commercial complex to sustain
Al-Azhar Park economically, and a plaza that will include underground
parking, shops, and cultural facilities, and will connect to an illuminated
promenade along the top of the Ayyubid Wall.

What is remarkable is that through deliberate efforts in this process,

young people from the neighborhood have been trained in restoration
and related skills such as stone work and carpentry, skills that are in
high demand in Egypt (see Figure 9). The Aga Khan Trust’s operation
of the Park and the continuing restoration of historic monuments have
provided training for over 1,000 people in the neighborhood. Job
training and employment opportunities are also being offered in other
sectors such as shoemaking, furniture manufacturing, and tourist goods
production. Apprenticeships are available for automobile electronics,

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Figure 3.11 The historic preservation and renovation of local monuments has led to training and
jobs for hundreds of young local workers from the low-income Darb Al-Ahmar neighborhood
adjacent to the Park.
Source: © Aga Khan Trust for Culture

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mobile telephones, computers, masonry, carpentry, and office skills.

Hundreds of young men and women in Darb Al-Ahmar have found
work in the Park, in horticulture and on project teams restoring the
Ayyubid Wall.75

Moreover, there is a microfinance program in Darb Al-Ahmar, which is

managed centrally by the First MicroFinance Foundation, an institution
that is part of the Aga Khan Agency for Microfinance.76 This institution
supports local ownership, stimulates the development of enterprise,
traditional workshops, and tourism, and ensures sustainability of the
rehabilitation work. In addition to these income-oriented loans,
the program in Cairo works with technical teams of the Aga Khan
Trust to assist residents of the Darb Al-Ahmar in the rehabilitation
of their homes (see Figure 3.12). Housing rehabilitation included the

Figure 3.12 What began as a top-down park project initiated by a millionaire philanthropist has
evolved into a community-based partnership, for example, in the rehabilitation of housing, as seen
in this image.
Source: © Aga Khan Trust for Culture

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installation of sanitation on each floor of apartment buildings – an

improvement that was especially important for women. New drainage
works have prevented the pooling of water, thereby reducing the
potential for water-borne disease.77 The aim is to preserve the area’s
historic character while simultaneously increasing the availability of
suitable rental housing, thus fully associating the local population with
rehabilitation and preservation efforts. Already in 2004, even before the
Park was opened to the public, nineteen community-owned houses with
seventy families, a health center, a business center, the restoration of an
old school building, and two reconstructed minarets were completed.78

The Aga Khan Trust helped initiate a health program that aims to
improve the health status of vulnerable women of reproductive age
and children under five.79 In 2010, over 2,000 patients benefitted from
the clinic in Darb Al-Ahmar. In addition to ensuring quality, infection
control, and patient safety procedures in the clinic, the program
provides counseling and implements health promotion interventions
in the community. In all, seventy education sessions and thirty public
campaigns were conducted by 2010. Health promotion activities have
resulted in increased awareness of safe pregnancy, family planning,
post-partum care, breast-feeding practices, and maternal and child
nutrition. Partnerships with civil society organizations were developed
to offer and sustain health promotion messages in the community.80

From Landscape Object to Socio-economic Development

Analyzing the Al-Azhar Park via the conceptual lens of city as flux
reveals a number of valuable insights, especially its role as a project
that is still evolving into something more powerful than just the
landscape design of the Park, and has a greater impact on the adjacent
neighborhood and its residents. What began as a top-down project that
was a gift from a generous philanthropist to the city of Cairo evolved
into a more decentralized partnership with the local government,
international foundations, and community groups by responding
directly to the needs of residents.

The Park itself has had an impact on the city, first as a symbol of
transformation:

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 Beyond Objects: City as Flux

The park is the largest green space created in Cairo in over a

century, reversing a trend in which unchecked development has
virtually eradicated the city’s once-famous parks. Built over a
mountain of debris that had served as the city’s garbage dump for
centuries, it also replaces one of Cairo’s most trenchant symbols of
poverty and decay.81

Second, the simplest and most immediate impact has been the use of
the Park by the residents of Cairo as well as tourists. A visitor described
the vibrant scene thus:

I watched a grandfather in-line skating with his granddaughter. I

had tea at the Lakeside Café and saw German tourists laughing
and smoking a water pipe. I saw shy young lovers – boys and girls
in hijab – from the neighborhood walk hand in hand around the
gardens. Some looked as though they had walked into their own
Egyptian movie, almost not believing such a place was possible so
close to home.82

Third, beyond the Park as purely a designed object, there is already

a long-term strategy of economic sustainability in place. Visitors pay
an entrance fee to help the Park become economically sustainable.
This fee has been criticized by many as an unfair burden on the poorer
residents of Cairo. However, the fee is minimal and income generated
from the ticket sales, parking, and the restaurants on site is used not
only for maintaining the Park but also to subsidize various preservation
projects in the adjacent neighborhood. This self-sustaining development
model is based on the waqf, or Islamic endowment, system, which uses
income-generating businesses to sustain public facilities donated to the
community.83

With over two million visitors a year, the Park not only generates
enough funds for its own maintenance through gate and restaurant
receipts, but has proven to be a powerful catalyst for urban renewal
in the neighboring district of Darb Al-Ahmar.84 In this manner, the Park
has become a device for making major significant socio-economic
changes. For example, as a training ground for local artisans, the
historic restorations have encouraged the revival of traditional skills
and employment for workers in the neighborhood.85 Most of the wood

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Figure 3.13 The ongoing process of the Al-Azhar Park project has greatly benefited the adjacent
Darb-Al Amar neighborhood through a mix of job training, employment, microfinance, housing
rehabilitation, and health programs, in addition to having regular access to a large public park in
their midst.
Source: © Aga Khan Trust for Culture

and marble workshops as well as the brass lantern producers come

from the neighborhood, which is also an economic advantage for the
economically impoverished neighborhood (see Figure 3.13).

The design strategy of reinvesting in neighborhoods has impacted

government policy as well. One of the biggest successes of the project
has been to convince local government authorities not to clear poor
people away from the Ayyubid Wall and to allow the Aga Khan Trust
for Culture to restore their housing so that they could have a stake in
the benefits emerging out of the restoration and revitalization work in
the neighborhood.86 In fact, a 1993 plan by the Governorate of Cairo
had included demolition of the neighborhood along the Ayyubid Wall
and relocation of part of the population, which reflects overvaluation

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of material beauty at the cost of human activities, a valuation that is

common to many policy-makers and designers. The Park project helped
shift that thinking in a significant manner.

MIT Experimental Design Studio, Boston

How can one train future urbanists to engage with and design the city
as flux? In 2009, an experimental urbanism studio at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology (MIT) in Boston tested the notion of design
as a verb, a becoming and unfolding process, similar to the art of
comedy improvisation (i.e., comedy improv), such that it fosters
playful interactions among different ideas, strategies, interventions,
scales, and materials, and injects strategic influxes of creativity at key
points in the evolution of a project. As the designer and professor of
the studio, I developed the comedy improv pedagogy based on my
training and performance in comedy improv in Hollywood, years of
professional experience in urbanism, and prior teaching experience
with other kinds of experimental studio pedagogies. In addition, two of
the most well-regarded books in comedy improv served as references:
Truth in Comedy: The Manual of Improvisation,87 and Improvise: Scene
from the Inside Out.88 Scholarly research on the uses of improvisation to
create innovation,89 including in business administration90 and computer
design,91 also aided in crafting the pedagogical experiment.

The project was to develop a design strategy for a nine-block area

undergoing rapid change and located just south of the Chinatown
area, near downtown Boston. The final strategy that emerged out of
the studio process included programming human activities and related
land uses, design of public spaces, integration of natural elements
such as vegetation and water in a highly urbanized area, adaptive
reuse of existing structures, and long-term phasing of adaptation and
implementation in the face of changing circumstances. The material
project was actually a vehicle for experimenting with comedy improv as
a design methodology for urbanism.

In all, about fifteen different comedy improv skill-building exercises

were carried out in the studio with the instructor and the students.
The students performed improv scenes in pairs, groups of three,

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and a group of six for added complexity (see Figure 3.14). The group
also watched a DVD of one of the leading comedy improv groups in
the United States, the Upright Citizens Brigade, including critiquing
the performance and listening to commentary from the professional
performers.92 Finally, the entire group from the studio attended an
evening of live comedy improv performance at one of the most
popular venues in Boston, Improv Asylum. Thus, over the course of
a four-month semester, students gained extensive exposure to and
immersion in the art of comedy improv.

The following exercises were performed in the studio: Super Eights,

Name Alliteration, Simulclap, Zip-Zap-Zoop, Word At A Time Story, Free
Association, Gibberish Talk, “Yes … And …” Agreement, “One-Two-
Three” Scene Initiation, Singing Circle, Environment Build, and Silent
Scene.93 Each of these exercises helps develop specific skills. For
example, Zip-Zap-Zoop is an exercise to hone the ability to focus,
use body movements, and react quickly, while Environment Build uses

Figure 3.14 Similar to learning to work creatively and collaboratively in urbanism, students
practiced doing comedy improv exercises in a group of six, creating characters, dialogue, plot, and
settings on the spur of the moment.
Source: Aseem Inam

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 Beyond Objects: City as Flux

body movements, hand gestures, and facial expressions to create

an imaginary setting, such as a bus-stop or a kitchen. The studio
proceeded by building on these exercises to develop student skills
and confidence quickly. The improv exercises were interspersed with
urbanism exercises to develop a back-and-forth fertilization of creative
collaboration and project development (see Table 3.1). In order to
further articulate this cross-fertilization, each student wrote a short
reflective essay after each exercise and posted it on the studio website
for further discussion.

Group Exercises Individual Exercises

1. Comedy improv exercises 2. Critical readings and analysis
and scenes of design theory
3. Interpretation and illustration
of theory
4. Analysis of site and context
through theory
5. Preliminary individual
brainstorming of ideas
6. Integrative urban design
concept and design
7. Revised individual design
development
8. Final Integrative urban
design project
Ongoing: Reflective essays on comedy improv and design exercises

Table 3.1 Sequence of group and individual exercises in MIT Experimental Design Studio, with
numbers referring to order of exercises over the course of the semester

Creative Collaboration

The primary objective of using comedy improv as a pedagogical tool

in the studio was to foster creative collaboration in the constantly
evolving processes of urbanism. There are several aspects of creative
collaboration, including supporting other members of a team rather
than being self-absorbed and trying to draw attention to oneself. As
Channa Halpern, one of the pioneers of comedy improv along with
Del Close, writes: “The only star in improv is the ensemble itself; if
everyone is doing his job well, then no one should stand out. The best

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way for an improviser to look good is by making his fellow players look
good.”94

One formal mechanism for learning to construct such agreement is the

“Yes … and …” exercise, which is a simple yet powerful technique for
creating synergy. Instead of immediately finding fault and disagreeing
with the other person, this exercise enables performers and designers
to agree with him or her and even build on his or her ideas. The “Yes
… and …” exercise is performed in pairs, in which one person starts
with a simple sentence such as: “Your bicycle is beautiful.” The other
person responds with the “Yes … and …” technique: “Yes, my bicycle
is beautiful, and I want to give it to you as a gift.” The first person then
responds: “Yes, you want to give it to me as a gift, and I am going to
use it to commute to work every day,” to which the second person then
adds: “Yes, you are going to use it to commute to work every day, and
I am going to get another bicycle for myself so that we can commute
together,” and so forth. Each person must always have the “Yes and …”
along with the repetition of the last part of the other person’s comment
at the beginning of his or her sentence. The exercise seems contrived,
and it is, the point being to resist a common reaction: “Yes but …”
The exercise helps enforce the rule of agreement, which is “the most
important rule in improvisation.”95 By following this simple rule two
players can build a scene and narrative, and it is also a relaxed way to
build cooperation. In this manner, a performer knows that his or her
colleague will immediately accept anything he or she says on stage.
When improvisers meet on stage, they commit to the reality they create
for each other, and a highly skilled improviser knows how to contribute
to an idea through his or her own character, plot, and actions.

The benefits of the “Yes …and …” exercise were felt almost

immediately among the students in the MIT Experimental Design
Studio, some of whom were working with each other for the first time:

In terms of team dynamics, the improv has made me feel quite

comfortable around … people I barely knew before the start
of the class. [Moreover,] I find myself attempting to search for
empathy while I am in a scene. Perhaps design is the same way.
There is a “tuning in” into various contexts and details in site
analysis and design. Particularly when you may not be familiar

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with everyone’s roles, you improvise your knowledge and

consider your audience.96

The exercise helps establish basic agreement and familiarity in a design

team to further creative collaboration.

A non-verbal exercise that takes the idea of establishing agreement

further is Simulclap, with the goal of honing each person’s skills in
listening and ability to focus. The team stands in a circle and one person
begins by turning to the person next to her and clapping her hands
once while making direct eye contact. The goal is for both persons to
clap their hands simultaneously. The person that received the applause
then turns and claps simultaneously with the next person in the circle.
This produces a cycle of simultaneous claps racing around the circle.
Once the simultaneous clapping (i.e. Simulclap) is moving in a highly
coordinated and speedy fashion, the person who is receiving the
applause may opt to give it back to the person who clapped at him or
her. This will reverse the direction of the clapping. In this manner, the
clapping can move around in different directions at high speeds, and
each person on the team must pay close attention to receiving and
sending the clapping while ensuring that it is done in such a coordinated
way that it sounds as if only one person is clapping at a time.

Improvisers and designers require cooperation through robust

teamwork. Often, there is a lack of creativity in groups because
individuals are unaware of each team member’s strengths and an
inability to work together in a manner that maximizes each member’s
contributions. In urbanism, the importance of a supportive team
environment is crucial to enhance creativity and productivity while
working on complex and challenging projects. The students realized
these parallels early in the studio:

I believe the incorporation of improv into the design process

allowed me to be more comfortable and confident in collaborating
and voicing ideas and opinions with the group. Starting the
semester with improv, literally with the first class, took away a
sense of vulnerability and helped put us all on the same playing
field – trying something new and seeing where it took us. The
emphasis of collaborating and pushing the idea forward was

97
 Beyond Objects: City as Flux

helpful during the first attempt at the integrative [design] group

work.97

Due to this dynamic, students became much more comfortable

presenting individual design ideas, knowing that other team members
would be supportive by focusing on the strengths rather than the
weaknesses of an idea and that critiques would tend to be constructive
rather than disparaging (for example, see Figure 3.15).

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by a
a student
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s e q u e n c e s to re v e a l what the
w h a t th e sense
se n s e of
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th e site
s ite is
is (e.g.,
(e.g., legible
le g ib le spaces,
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m e m o ra b le urban
u rb a n form,
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p e rc e p tio n of
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id e n tifia b le character).
character).

Source; Hannah
Source: H a n n a h Creeley
C re e le y

98
 Beyond Objects: City as Flux

Fostering Innovation

Innovation is an essential element in comedy improv and in urbanism.

In comedy improv, improvisers need the skills to generate interesting
ideas spontaneously, for example, to develop a humorous situation
from normal, mundane activity in unexpected ways. Urbanists need to
develop skills to create new ideas and methods to stimulate innovative
solutions to seemingly intractable design problems. These skills involve
the ability to brainstorm rather than self-editing out of risk aversion,
and to discover interesting patterns through what may initially appear
to be isolated moments.

The purpose of the Gibberish Talk exercise is to be inventive and

create an invented language on the spot and to carry on a believable
conversation. The exercise helps performers move beyond worrying
about what each person sounds like and to explore accents and other
ways of communicating (e.g., tonality, gestures, facial expressions).
The team members stand in a circle in which one person begins by
turning to his or her neighbor and saying something in a completely
gibberish tongue. The second person then responds to the first in the
same gibberish tongue and in a tone of voice and attitude that suggests
the beginning of a conversation. After exchanging a few sentences
back and forth, the second person then turns to the other neighbor
and begins another conversation in an entirely new and different
gibberish tongue. Each person in the circle conducts at least two such
gibberish conversations and possibly more, depending on how many
times these conversations continue around the circle. The gibberish
can communicate questions and answers, emotions such as worry
or laughter, arguments and agreements, and a wide range of other
possibilities. With the growing interest in urbanism from non-designers,
exercises such as Gibberish Talk are one way of helping to foster
innovation by discovering one’s innate creativity, whether expressed
verbally, physically, or visually.

At the same time, there are design cultures that place such a high value
on innovation and novelty that urbanists may fail to notice design
solutions that appear to be obvious, yet can be highly intelligent in
their simplicity as well as viable in their implementation. Comedy
improvisers regularly dare each other to be dull, such as conducting a

99
Beyond Objects: City as Flux

normal conversation but in gibberish. Too often, by expending energy

in trying to be funny or original one fails to notice what is most needed
to move a scene along. By being seemingly obvious, one is able to
focus on present needs and provide satisfactory closure to an idea. In
addition, what is obvious to one person may not be obvious to another,
and being obvious and being innovative are not mutually exclusive, yet
this can be a common tension in design.

An effective approach to being innovative without overlooking the

obvious is to build improv comedy scenes piece by piece, starting with
one individual’s idea and then adding to it in simple ways such that
over time the team develops an overall pattern. This is also a way of
creating larger design ideas using smaller individual ones, as one of the
students noted in the studio:

I think that the concept of building a scene is very appropriate to

the act of design … because [urbanism] is so complicated; it is
often necessary to pick a small part to focus on … and then slowly
begin to build back other elements of the whole picture. Just as in
improv, as you add pieces of information or goals into the design
process, then the final outcome will shift slightly.98

Thus, there are multiple ways of being innovative, including through

on-the-spot invention, by building upon what may appear to be
obvious, and via the incremental design process (for example, see
Figure 3.16).

Supporting Spontaneity

A central principle of comedy improv is the spontaneity of action, as

performers react constructively to the stimuli provided by audience
members and fellow improvisers. Similarly, urbanists may know the
overall direction of their work, but cannot confidently predict whether
the direction will remain the same throughout the course of a project.
Thus, the ability to react constructively to one’s uncertain, changeable,
internal, and external environment is crucial.

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 Beyond Objects: City as Flux

Figure 3.16 The visual capture of the long discussion between individual team members as they
identified site priorities and debated design strategies towards the articulation of a collective approach.
Source: Hannah Creeley, Catherine Duffy, Blair Humphreys, Sarah Snider, Sara Zewde, and
Kathleen Ziegenfuss

In comedy improv, a necessary skill is known as “listening for the

game,” which is the structure of a scene that evolves in a matter of a
few minutes as different performers contribute characters, dialogue,
and narrative twists. The game in an improv scene is often revealed
in the first three lines of dialogue, which establish the who (i.e.,
characters), what (i.e., topic of conversation), and where (i.e., setting) of
the scene. Once the basic structure is established, the game (i.e., scenic
structure) is created on the spot as part of the improvised initiation. A
crucial skill in developing the game spontaneously from basic dialogue
is a keen ability to listen to others in the team and to build upon
their contributions with one’s own ideas, rather than negating others’
contributions through denial or disagreement. Spontaneity of action
is also achieved by breaking free from traditional frames of references
and associations, and therefore being able to accept and integrate

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Beyond Objects: City as Flux

spontaneous offers from other sources. Activating intuitive thinking

through contradictory activity is one way to break traditional frames of
references.

Urban practice also requires the ability to perform unscripted, both

within a team of practitioners as well as with stakeholders in the
community or the political arena. This involves listening and responding
to moments and finding opportunities for furthering an idea, often in
unexpected places. This ability to listen, respond, and think quickly
on one’s feet in order to explore design strategies further is beneficial
to both the pedagogical process and design practice, as one of the
students notes:

I appreciated the quick thinking mentality of improv – it’s easy to

get caught up with projects, laboring over different ideas, only
to end up spinning your wheels. The push to react quickly to a
problem felt good, and I think will help with the design process –
not to stick with your first impulse, but to use it as a way to start
exploring ideas … it really helps us all feel comfortable and open to
new ideas, running with things, etc.99

Developing Practice Via Pedagogy

The comedy improv skills described thus far were learnt not only
through exercises and practice, but also through an urbanism process
applied to a site and project in Boston. The site for the studio was
located near downtown Boston, between the more historic Chinatown
area and the emerging South End area, immediately southwest of the
I-90/I-93 highway interchange. The site was bound by Herald Street on
the north, Albany Street on the east, East Berkeley Street on the south,
and Shawmut Avenue on the west. The Boston Herald building is within
the site, and Castle Square housing project is immediately to the west.

The site was selected because in some ways it is an example of a

clear and legible urban fabric. The street network is essentially an
orthogonal grid, highways define two edges, and a major thoroughfare,
Washington Street, passes through it. In other ways, the site is
complicated. The location is in between two clearly defined areas,

102
 Beyond Objects: City as Flux

Chinatown to the north and the South End to the south; there are
multiple and conflicting demands for the future of the site, for example,
between affordable and market rate housing; and there is no clear
identity to the site in terms of land use: Is it industrial? Residential?
Retail? Office? Institutional? Or all of the preceding uses? What
makes the site all the more interesting is that it is highly reflective of
conditions found in most American cities, with their adjacencies to
highways, multiple identities, and no particularly distinguishing physical
character.

The pedagogical process simulated professional practice in some

ways and diverted from it in others. The studio worked as a team and
conducted multiple design exercises simultaneously. While pursuing
the project, the students also performed a number of comedy improv
exercises to explore techniques of team-building, collaborative
creativity, and spontaneous expression. Another major divergence
from professional practice was that the team had a horizontal network
character rather than the vertical hierarchy commonly found in private
firms and public organizations. Design ideas were debated and
discussed without a singular leader to make final decisions, which led
to longer time frames for discussions and often heated debate without
quick resolutions, but ultimately yielded a deeper sense of supporting
each other as team members with equal import and yielded extremely
interesting ideas.

The comedy improv work conducted as part of the studio pedagogy

produced numerous lessons. In terms of the practical skills of
working together, the improv exercises allowed the class to bond as
a group very quickly, to remove barriers to interaction and honest
discussion, and to foster an atmosphere of creativity, risk taking and
experimentation. Comedy improv also provided the group with a
practice run of working together creatively before the final design
exercise that integrated individual ideas into one proposal. In terms of
the creative process of design, the improv exercises proved very useful
in mitigating some of the inherent biases of the students and opening
their minds to new approaches. Among the most important lessons
learned by the group in this regard were to minimize self-editing, to
nurture a supportive, creative environment, to learn to act in thoughtful
yet unscripted ways, and to discover opportunities and patterns by

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Beyond Objects: City as Flux

building upon the work of others. These lessons were enhanced by the
risky nature of the comedy improv and applied by the students to
the design process. As an example, students critically reflected on the
fact that a more direct application of the “Yes … And …” exercise could
have occurred during the in-studio collaborative design workshops to
more directly develop synergies between individual design ideas, such
as: “Yes, you would like to put a research park there, and I would like to
keep the [old Boston] Herald [newspaper printing] Building.”100

Learning to Design the City as Flux

As urbanists learn to navigate the ambiguity of city-design-and-building

processes with their multiple stakeholders, conflicting goals, political
decision making, and changing circumstances, they need sets of skills
that are not normally taught in architecture, landscape architecture,
urban design, or city planning programs.

Many academic studios obsess about producing radical urban forms

in which there is innovation for the sake of innovation, what I call the
“tyranny of novelty.” The approach adopted in this studio was both
more thoughtful and more radical than the production of cutting-edge
formal ideas: to engage in an experimental and open-ended design
process and critically reflect on its outcomes. The design outcomes
followed in this process were nuanced but nonetheless significant. One
example of this was adopting a fine-grained approach to the facilitation
of myriad human activities such as moving, eating, or playing (see
Figure 3.17), rather than ascribing to conventional land uses such as
residential, retail, or industrial:

What has been particularly interesting about this whole process

have been the discussions that went along with all the design
phases. The most interesting one was the debate about land use
and prescribing users [which are usually taken for granted], which
went on for quite some time. Though I found that the conversation
[got] frustrating at times … I think struggling through [it] was quite
worthwhile. In the end I liked the resolution of the activity mapping
and the nebulous design.101

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 Beyond Objects: City as Flux

The unconventional pedagogical process of the studio resulted in an

equally unconventional project. Rather than a rigid three-dimensional
built-out vision that is common to most urban design projects, the
MIT Studio project was more flexible, adaptive, and strategic. A key
component was an overall long-term design strategy for the site.
Priorities in the strategy included reconstructing the network of streets,
strategic selection and adaptive reuse of existing buildings as valued
assets, more efficient use of a scarce resource – land – through multi-
purpose programming, increasing the amount of active street edges,
and creating new scenarios for the material city based on the values
of Kevin Lynch’s book Good City Form, such as intertwining human
and ecological vitality. A second major component was the mapping of
current and future human activities rather than specifying conventional
land uses at a fine-grained scale to help guide development over time.
The activities included living, moving, producing, entertaining, dining,
advertising, and growing. The patterns of activities will change as
contextual circumstances evolve over time. For example, as the noise
and pollution of the neighboring highways are increasingly mitigated
through particular types of landscape interventions and transportation
technologies, living would occur closer to the edges of the highways
(see Figure 3.17).

A third major component was a network of innovative types of open

spaces and natural features that integrate water and vegetation
into the everyday experience of an urban setting. This included an
urban ecological park right next to the highways to conduct publicly
accessible research on the impacts of the urban environment on trees
and plants, and to visually demonstrate such impacts to residents and
visitors (see Figure 3.18). A fourth component was a set of different
scenarios that the students developed for individual parcels of land
based on the overall design strategy. The scenarios illustrated how
human activities such as exploring, relaxing, and playing will be
fostered at the micro-scales through a combination of built structures,
materials, textures, and colors (see Figure 3.19). Ultimately, the
project was a vehicle for an open-ended design process, with students
constantly making decisions about site programming and graphic
representation through simultaneous methods of analysis, reflection,
brainstorming, dialogue, debate, and group collaboration.

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Beyond Objects: City as Flux

A C T I V I T Y M A P

A C T I V I T Y

Figure 3.17 The

F igure 3.17 T he long-term
lo n g -te rm design
d e s ig n strategy forr the
s tra te g y fo th e project
p ro je c t site
s ite involved
in v o lv e d nurturing
n u rtu rin g specific
s p e c ific types
ty p e s of
of
activities
a c tiv itie s (e.g.,
(e.g., living,
liv in g , working,
w o rk in g , playing,
p la y in g , producing,
p ro d u c in g , moving) that
m o v in g ) th a t would
w o u ld evolve
e v o lv e over time
o v e r tim e rather than
ra th e r th an
conventional
c o n v e n tio n a l and
and fixed
fix e d land
la nd uses
uses (e.g.,
(e.g., residential,
re s id e n tia l, office,
offic e , manufacturing).
m a n u fa c tu rin g ).

S o u rc e ; Hannah
Source: H a n n a h Creeley,
C reeley, Catherine
C a th e rin e Duffy,
D u ffy , Blair
B la ir Humphreys,
H u m p h re y s , Sarah
S a ra h Snider,
S n id e r, Sara
S a ra Zewde,
Z e w d e , and
and
Kathleen
K a th le e n Ziegenfuss
Z ie g e n fu s s

Future trends in urbanism include increasing extensive collaboration

within interdisciplinary design teams and with project stakeholders in
order to operationalize the concept of city as flux. Democratic decision-
making necessarily involves multiple shades of gray in terms of how

106
 Beyond Objects: City as Flux

-CHINATOWN

H'»4t INTERSTATE
90

CASTLE SQUARE

INTERSTATE

93 /

FORT POINT
CHANNEL

Figure 3.18 The

F igure 3.18 The former
fo rm e r Boston
B o s to n Herald
H e rald newspaper
n e w s p a p e r printing
p rin tin g plant
p la n t converted
c o n v e rte d into
in to a
a microbrewery
m ic ro b re w e ry
combined
c o m b in e d with
w ith an
an urban
u rb a n ecological
e c o lo g ic a l research
research park that
p a rk th a t extends
e x te n d s into
in to the
th e rest
rest of
o f the
th e site
s ite through
th ro u g h
greenways,
g re e n w a y s , bioswales, water
b io s w a le s , w a te r channels,
chan nels, and
and storm water
s to rm w a te r retention
re te n tio n ponds.
p on ds.

S o u rc e ; Kathleen
Source: K a th le e n Ziegenfuss
Z ie g e n fu s s

various stakeholders perceive and position themselves on critical

urban challenges.102 Comedy improv exercises help urbanists with tasks
of creative group collaboration, truly listening to other people, and
building upon other people’s ideas in a constructive manner. The most
significant overlap between comedy improv and urbanism is that both
involve teamwork that is creative, constructive, and collaborative. Often,
when collaborating in design, the ideas of others are viewed skeptically
or with great reserve, with individuals often favoring those ideas
championed by themselves and ultimately having to end in some form
of compromise or acceding to the decisions of an authority figure such

107
Beyond Objects: City as Flux

C O M IN G

Activity Map

■
Vitality

■
Sense

■1Fit

■
Access I

■
C o n tr o l

Dimension Map

Figure 3.19 Design

F igure 3.19 D esign outcomes
o u tc o m e s of
o f the
th e comedy
c o m e d y improv/urbanism
im p ro v /u rb a n is m processes
processes included
in c lu d e d envision
e n v is io n a
a series
series of
of
“What
"W h a t …
... if?”
if? " scenarios that
scena rios th a t enrich the
enrich th e neighborhood through
n e ig h b o rh o o d th ro u g h an
an innovative
in n o v a tiv e mix
m ix of
o f future
fu tu re activities
a c tiv itie s and
and
forms
fo rm s and
and spaces
spaces that
th a t nurture
n u rtu re humanist
h u m a n is t values
valu e s such
such as
as vitality
v ita lity and
a n d access.
access.

S o u rc e ; Hannah
Source: H a n n a h Creeley,
C reeley, Catherine
C a th e rin e Duffy,
D u ffy , Blair
B la ir Humphreys,
H u m p h re y s , Sarah
S a ra h Snider,
S n id e r, Sara
S a ra Zewde,
Z e w d e , and
and
Kathleen
K a th le e n Ziegenfuss.
Z ie g e n fu s s .

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 Beyond Objects: City as Flux

as the team leader or client. However, approaching ideas and iterations

with a positive commitment creates more room for good ideas to grow
and avoids their premature dismissal. Overall, such an approach creates
a set of deeper structural dynamics of design exploration and genuine
creativity to enhance the quality of professional practice.

One structural dynamic for multiple authors to collaborate is through an

iterative process in which design ideas by different authors are viewed
supportively rather than skeptically. A second structural dynamic is to
operationalize the conceptual idea of a horizontal network for genuine
team collaboration. A third structural dynamic is to embrace design
as an ongoing process rather than a finished product, which parallels
the never-ending city-building process with its own twists and turns.
A fourth structural dynamic is as a model of professional practice that
creates modes of collaboration for investigating specific challenges and
design strategies beyond conventional expectations.

City as Flux and the Practice of Urbanism

By engaging directly with the concept of city as flux, albeit sometimes

inadvertently, each of the case studies in this chapter produced a wide
range of urban transformations. For example, in the Olympic Village
project in Barcelona almost every conceivable public project was
undertaken in a remarkably short period of time by the city. Extensive
areas of the waterfront were made accessible and returned to the
citizens of Barcelona. The Cinturó de Ronda brought needed circulatory
access and recreational amenities to a city that was beginning to choke
on its traffic congestion. As part of the larger project for the Olympics,
an airport expansion provided more commodious and efficient
connections with the outside world. Numerous public institutional
facilities, lacking in prior times, were constructed or refurbished, and
Barcelona gained an extensive ensemble of sports facilities, rivaling
those anywhere in the world. Elements of the private sector and civil
society also responded to the leadership offered by the municipality,
improving their own facilities and the overall vitality and points of
interest within the city.

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Beyond Objects: City as Flux

While at the beginning of the Al-Azhar Park project the idea was to
provide Cairo with a much-needed green space at the heart of its
historic agglomeration, the progressive uncovering of a mile-long (1.5
kilometers) historic wall led to another major task – giving a new face
to the historic city as seen from the Park. Eventually, the conservation
project for the wall itself, being inseparable from the abutting historic
city fabric, led the Aga Khan Trust for Culture to consider a third, equally
important priority; that is, launching a combined physical and social
rehabilitation process in the neighboring area of the Park, the Darb
al-Ahmar district. It became clear that the Park construction and the
historic wall conservation project should also act as stimuli for the
rehabilitation of Darb al-Ahmar. Accordingly, the Trust initiated a range
of community-based urban upgrading projects that contributed to the
improvement of living conditions in the vicinity of the Park by providing
cultural, social, economic, and institutional support.

The MIT Experimental Design Studio in Boston developed innovative

design methodologies for future practitioners to engage with the city as
flux. As urbanists learn to navigate the ambiguity of the city-design-and-
building process with its multiple stakeholders, conflicting goals, and
political decision-making, they need sets of skills that are not normally
taught in conventional urban design programs. Techniques of comedy
improv nurture creative collaboration as increasingly interdependent
work tasks require abilities to work effectively with others and
communicate ideas with commitment, while being open to the ideas of
others that may not normally fall within one’s field of perception. All of
these skills enable practitioners to be highly sensitive, nimble, and
adaptive to constantly evolving urban challenges. Moreover, integrating
these techniques more widely when teaching urbanism will allow future
practice to be increasingly transformative.

Each of these case studies illustrates a different aspect of city as flux.

For the Olympic Village, it is its creation as a part of a one-hundred-
year-old process; for Al-Azhar Park, it is the ways in which a clearly
defined physical object became an ongoing socio-economic program;
and for the MIT Experimental Design Studio, it is a set of skills,
techniques, and attitudes for designing flux.

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 Beyond Objects: City as Flux

Over the long run, while it may appear to be obvious that cities
change, what does it mean for someone who is directly engaged with
city-design-and-building processes as an urbanist? The philosopher
Henri Bergson offers a clear diagnosis:

The point is that usually we look at change but we do not see it. We
speak of change, but we do not think it. We say that change exists,
that everything changes, that change is the very law of things: Yes,
we say it and we repeat it; but those are only words, and we reason
and philosophize as though change did not exist. In order to think
change and see it, there is a whole veil of prejudices to brush aside,
some of them artificial, created by philosophical speculation, the
others natural to common sense.103

Following on from Bergson’s comments, what would be the benefits

if urbanism, both as an object of study and as a mode of practice,
were to be approached from the perspective of flux more than just an
object? Why would such a reversal of ontological priorities be helpful?
It would be helpful for three reasons. First, it would enable researchers
to obtain a more complete understanding of the micro-processes of
urban change at work. For example, to more properly understand
urbanism one must allow for emergence and surprise; that is, one
must take into account the possibility of urbanism having ramifications
and implications beyond those initially imagined, as discussed in the
next chapter on the consequences of design. Second, as well as not
knowing much about the micro-processes of change, we often do not
know enough about how change is actually accomplished. In order
to understand this, we would need an analysis of urbanism that was
fine-grained enough to show how change was accomplished on the
ground – how ideas were translated into action, and, by so doing, how
they were modified, adapted, and changed. Third, a major cause of
dissatisfaction with the traditional approach to change – the approach
that gives priority to stability and treats change as an epiphenomenon
– is paradigmatic. Strategies for change that are informed by that view
often do not produce actual change, let alone transformation.

111
4
Beyond Intentions:
Consequences of Design
In fields that engage directly with the design of cities – such as
architecture, landscape architecture, city planning, and urbanism
– conventional thinking tends to heavily favor intentions over
consequences. Such thinking is conditioned from the beginning
in the training of conventional urbanists, where presentations and
discussions of studio projects rotate around the objectives of each
proposal. Similarly, in courses on the history of architecture, a great
amount of emphasis is placed on analyzing the ideas and sketches of
acknowledged masters such as Le Corbusier and Frank Lloyd Wright,
while comparatively little attention is paid to the status and effects of
their projects several decades later.

This culture of heavily skewing towards intentionality is further

reinforced in the journalistic writings on urbanism, in which newly built
projects are extensively photographed, presented on the covers of
magazines, and often breathlessly discussed by critics and journalists
as the latest embodiment of sustainability, technology, best practices,
or other singular claims that would in reality take several years or
decades to verify. For example, when the new Guggenheim Museum,
designed by Frank Gehry, was built in Bilbao, Spain, design critics and
journalists spared no time in praising it as an iconic project that was
already transforming the city by attracting large numbers of tourists.

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 Beyond Intentions: Consequences of Design

More serious analyses that took place a decade later revealed that
the city was indeed transforming, but that this was due to a broader
strategy of economic redevelopment that included public investments
such as a new subway line and airport, new infrastructure such as
water supply and sewage systems, residential, commercial, and
waterfront developments, seaport and industrial parks, and other
cultural initiatives such as an incubator and concert hall, of which the
Guggenheim was only one, albeit prominent, part.1

These discourses are reconfirmed through the culture of competitions

and awards, which reinforce the bias towards intentionality at the cost
of consequences by recognizing ideas more so than the ripple effects of
those ideas. For example, the American Institute of Architects Honor
Awards for Regional and Urban Design in 2011 – considered to be the
“best of the best” in the United States – all went to proposals that were
years away from implementation. One of the awardees, the Central
Business District Eastern Expansion Plan in Beijing by the private firm
Skidmore Owings and Merrill, is described as defining “opportunities
for the growth of commerce, industry, culture and the arts by
establishing a flexible framework for growth and an environmentally
sustainable approach to 21st Century city design.”2 Whether any of this
will actually come to fruition seems to have been a moot point. What is
particularly notable is that all the members of the jury that recognized
ideas rather than actual projects are practicing urbanists, which is the
case for most competition and award juries all over the world.

While it is essential to think through and then analyze the intentionality

of design strategies in urbanism, what matters ultimately are the
consequences of each intervention. Such consequences often occur
years or decades later and may be in the realm of ideas, shaping
future policy or suggesting effective types of strategies, but the
most significant impact is on the city, whether it is the immediate
neighborhood or the daily lives of its citizens.

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Conceptual Shift: From Intentions to

Consequences
Such reasonings and all reasonings turn upon the idea that if one
exerts certain kinds of volition, one will undergo in return certain
compulsory perceptions. Now this sort of consideration, namely,
that certain lines of conduct will entail certain kinds of inevitable
experiences is what is called a practical consideration. Hence is
justified the maxim, belief in which constitutes [P]ragmatism;
namely: In order to ascertain the meaning of an intellectual
conception one should consider what practical consequences might
conceivably result by necessity from the truth of that conception;
and the sum of these consequences will constitute the entire
meaning of the conception.3

Charles Peirce suggests that the whole meaning of a conception

consists in the entire set of its practical consequences, in that a
meaningful conception must be capable of being related to a collection
of possible empirical observations. In the above quote, Peirce is
not suggesting a vulgar kind of pragmatism, which misleadingly
connotes a ruthless and Machiavellian search for mercenary or political
advantage. Instead, this refers to a method of experimentational mental
reflection that leads to verification and/or the generation of explanatory
hypotheses. The core of this method is the habit of questioning and
exploring, testing answers and discoveries in relation to empirical
evidence of one kind or another.4 This maxim also suggests a vital
conceptual shift from an over-emphasis on design intentions towards
a more serious consideration of design consequences, and thus offers
telling new insights into the potential impacts of urbanism.

The centrality of this line of thinking for Pragmatism is clear because

for Peirce, Pragmatism is “no doctrine of metaphysics, no attempt to
determine any truth of things. It is merely a method of ascertaining
the meaning of hard words and of abstract concepts” and this method
is “no other than that experimental method by which all successful
sciences … have reached the degrees of certainty that are severally
proper to them today.”5 In a sequel article entitled “How to Make Our
Ideas Clear,” Peirce applied similar principles to the nature of our
conceptions of the world. Peirce proposed a new way of thinking about

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our mental constructs: “Consider what effects which might conceivably

have practical bearings we conceive the object of our conception
to have. Then, our conception of these effects is the whole of our
conception of the object.”6 This is known as the Pragmatic maxim, and
this principle arises directly from the notion of belief as a suitable guide
to action. Moreover, this consequential notion of truth involves not only
a connection with reality for the individual believer, but also entails a
social relation with other believers. As each one of an indefinitely large
number of individual people engages in scientific investigation, their
habits of belief will – in the long run – tend to converge upon the same
conception of the world, one that most clearly corresponds with reality.
As Peirce noted, even human stubbornness, deception, and error can
only delay and not completely prevent our eventual acknowledgment of
the order of the world.

Thus, the Pragmatic maxim is closely related to the Pragmatic definition

of truth. In Pragmatism, the concept of truth or the real is what is
agreed upon within a certain group. Furthermore, the truth is also
the totality of a concept, the “would-be.”7 The “would-be” is the total
meaning of a concept in terms of what a thing has done and what it
would do in different possible contexts. What a thing actually does
and what actually happens affect the total meaning of it, which leaves
room for interpretation and indicates that neither the concept nor
the consequences are fixed. For example, Peirce talked about what
we mean when we call a substance hard is that it will scratch glass,
resist bending, and so on; those practical effects are what the concept
of hardness is dependent upon. Hardness is not an abstract property
or essence; it is the sum total of what all hard things do. While
framing a conception’s meaning in terms of conceivable tests, Peirce
emphasized that since a conception is general, its meaning equates
to its acceptance’s implications for general practice, rather than to any
definite set of actual consequences or test results themselves. In other
words, individual outcomes are not where the meaning or value of a
term reside. A conception’s meaning points towards its conceivable
verifications.

Several scholars have critiqued Peirce’s thinking. One critique is the

risk that Peirce’s idea of fallibilism (which means that our knowledge
is impermanent and linked to the pragmatic maxim) could be

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interpreted as general skepticism. Elizabeth Cooke argues that this

is not the case, but instead that Peirce reconceived knowledge to
be dynamic and evolving.8 Arthur Lovejoy critiques how Peirce is
unclear about what is meant by “conception” of an object as well as
“clearness,” and discusses how different subjects will understand a
thing’s consequences differently, thereby declaring Peirce’s theorem to
be an empirical generalization.9 Moreover, Lovejoy argues that there
is a problem in understanding the meaning of an object because in
order to understand that object clearly we need to be aware of all of
its sensible qualities. Furthermore, Lovejoy perceives the time interval
between the discovery of the ”effects of an object” and the realization
of its ”practical bearings” as a potential problem. In contrast, Richard
Bernstein explains that there has to be an openness towards that fact
that we cannot anticipate all the consequences of a concept, and there
is no end to the time frame as to when we should stop to consider the
consequences of a concept or project.10 Ultimately, Bernstein argues,
the pragmatic maxim should be interpreted as an invitation to make
concepts clearer and less abstract.

William James elaborated further upon Peirce’s original ideas by stating

that “the [P]ragmatic method … means an attitude of orientation.
The attitude of looking away from first things, ‘categories,’ supposed
necessities; and looking towards last things, fruits, consequences,
facts.”11 In this quote one sees two basic elements of Pragmatic thinking.
First is the suspicion of any absolute and necessary principles that
would be more basic than our human experience, and the second is the
forward-looking characteristic of Pragmatic thinking that looks primarily
at the consequences. The implications of this are that one should not
determine a priori anything more than is required to facilitate the
empirical study of human activities that will, in and of themselves,
provide answers to theoretical questions.

Another widely quoted statement by James is supposedly “There can

be no difference that does not make a difference.” In fact, James’s exact
words are “There can be no difference anywhere that doesn’t make
a difference elsewhere – no difference in abstract truth that doesn’t
express itself in a difference in concrete fact and in conduct consequent
upon that fact, imposed on somebody, somehow, somewhere and
somewhen.”12 Here, James emphasizes that what matters in endeavors,

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such as urbanism, is what makes a difference. However, this was not to

imply a narrow focus on material consequences, although it is valuable
to understand these consequences. It also implies consideration of the
consequences for the evolving moral formation of people and polities,
including in cities. In this evolution, facts and values, means and ends,
analysis and ethics, problems and solutions are as much discovered
in social contexts as they are preformed and a priori.13 The fact that
conceptions and consequences are discovered through the living of life
rather than only as an end result relates to the notion that urbanism
discovers itself as it puts plans and programs into the world. Much like
life, then, urbanism can also discover its transformative potential as it
moves and evolves, rather than just be satisfied with the formal and
static qualities of the material city.

What Consequences of Design Mean for Urbanism

As we saw in the previous chapter, cities are in a state of flux, which

means that concepts of urbanism and their consequences also change
over time. In this context, Cooke’s argument about fallibilism, which is
a consequence of Peirce’s Pragmatic maxim, applies, since it advocates
an openness and questioning of knowledge.14 The notion that concepts
in urbanism are fallible suggests that they are subject to review,
correction, and confirmation. A related consequence of fallibilism in
urbanism is that there are opportunities for the growth of new ideas,
new systems, and new applications as cities and societies change.

Pragmatism illuminates such types of consequences because the

integration of theory and practice is central to its thinking, in that it not
only looks towards the intentions of a concept but rather towards the
consequences. For example, the concept of rent stabilization in New
York City, where the intention was originally to prevent inflation, had
the unanticipated consequence of preserving neighborhoods that would
otherwise have been abolished. Thus, from a Pragmatist’s point of view,
the concept of rent stabilization is to be defined by what consequences
it has in practice (e.g., as a neighborhood preservation strategy), rather
than only by the initial intentions behind the concept (e.g., controlling
inflationary rent increases).15

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In a study funded by the American Planning Association, I examined the

gap between intentions of the citywide transit-oriented development
design guidelines and the actual implementation of the first such
project, Rio Vista West, in San Diego, California.16 In the late 1980s
and early 1990s, the planners of the City of San Diego developed a
pioneering vision for the future of the city to concentrate development
along new light rail transit routes. The vision was embodied in bold
ways through politically approved and legally adopted documents such
as the City’s General Plan, Street Manual, and Land Development Code.
In the end, these intentions were not enough, since the consequences
implemented at the Rio Vista West project made it less transit-friendly
by being less pedestrian-friendly. What the planners failed to anticipate
and engage with were the realities of outdated traffic engineering
standards that favor extraordinarily wide and high-speed streets as
well as the rigid perceptions of market demand that favor automobile-
oriented retail as being more financially feasible. As a result, the
on-the-ground consequences of the project are disappointing in that the
automobile (rather than the pedestrian or public transit) still dominates
the design of the neighborhood.

In recent years, there has been great interest in the consequences of

urbanism in terms of public health. A particular focus is on the impacts
of low-density, automobile-oriented, land-use-segregated types of urban
growth after World War II popularly known as “sprawl.” The claim is that

obesity, inactivity, depression, and loss of community has not

happened to us. We legislated, subsidized and planned it in this
way. Through zoning, we separated land uses – a sensible idea
when tanneries and foundries were close to homes, but an idea
that has left us, nearly a century later, unable to walk from homes
to offices or shops. Our taxes subsidized the highways that turned
the downtowns of most American cities into no-man’s-lands … Tax
subsidies on new, distant homes, reached by driving on subsidized
highways, as well as declining public schools and the abolition of
subsidy for public transit, pulled the tax base away from the city.17

The types of consequence-oriented design solutions that these studies

suggest include higher density, mixed land use and more walkable
types of urbanism, with regional strategies that include public transit

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networks combined with the creation of parks and preservation of

wilderness areas.18 We have yet to see whether such strategies can
indeed ameliorate the obesity epidemics that many parts of the world
are facing.

What is also paradoxical is that for centuries the material city in Africa,
Asia, Europe, and Latin America was dense, compact, walkable, and
possessed the physical proximities that tend to foster a sense of
community. Then, notions of public health (e.g., more open space
leads to less disease), modernization (e.g., technologies such as the
car lead to greater freedom and productivity), and celebrated urbanists
such as Le Corbusier (e.g., the tower in the park) vastly contributed to
what are now considered to be unhealthy urban and suburban lifestyles.
The claims for a more sustainable urbanism are along the same lines:
increasing sustainability through density, integrating transportation
and land use, creating car-free areas, locally owned stores, walkable
neighborhoods, and universal accessibility, fostering walk-to open
spaces, neighborhood storm water systems and waste treatment, and
food production, and designing high-performance buildings and district
energy systems.19 Unfortunately, many of these claims still lean towards
future intentions rather than being based on a critical understanding of
actual on-the-ground intended and unintended consequences.

This conceptual shift from design intentions to design consequences

offers telling new insights into urban practices and projects. In
the following sections, I describe how this can occur with three
different projects, in three different contexts, and with three different
implications for the consequences of design. The intentions behind
the Centre Pompidou in Paris were to create a national center for art
and culture and a singular architectural landmark, but its accidental
consequences resulted in an urbanism that is vital and vibrant. The
idea of the India Habitat Centre in New Delhi was to redesign cities by
redesigning institutions, and in the process resulted in a new urban
center where intellectual discourse, policy-making, art, performance,
and social interaction intersect in unique ways. The Big Dig in
downtown Boston was designed to solve problems of severe traffic
congestion, yet resulted in the transformation of a landfill into a public
park, reduced air pollution, green space in the heart of the city, and
perhaps most significantly, a symbol for not only reverse engineering

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prior mistakes but creating new symbols of a transformed city. As I

will show with the Big Dig, this conceptual shift offers possibilities
for projects whose consequences may be designed even further
after its official completion through continued work and ongoing
transformation.

Centre Pompidou, Paris

With the launching of an international design competition in 1970, the
Centre National d’Art et de Culture Georges Pompidou (referred to herein
as Centre Pompidou or the Center) now has a four-decade history in
the heart of Paris. The conventional narrative of this history has focused
on the innovative nature of the architectural design of the individual
building. In this section, I present an analysis of the project’s accidental
success in creating a vibrant contemporary urbanism in the Les Halles
and Marais districts of Paris. The Centre Pompidou took the architecture
world by storm through its highly visible steel frame structure, large-span
flexible exhibit spaces, its brightly colored services such as water and
ventilation pipes on the exterior of the building, an all-glass façade that
created multiple transparencies, and spaces that include a mediatheque, a
state-of-the-art film theater, a library open to the public, a restaurant with
a stunning view of the city, and multiple exhibition spaces that attract
millions of visitors every year (see Figure 4.1).

At the same time, this singular building generated a larger scale

transformation of the urban area. As the Centre Pompidou attracted
increasing numbers of Parisians and visitors, private and public
investment poured into the surrounding buildings in the form of retail
and residential uses. It created vibrant public spaces by facilitating
magnetic attractions in the form of regular and lively street performers
and a colorful, sculptural water fountain. The colorful Stravinksy
Fountain attracts a mix of young and old, residents and visitors to sit on
its edge, to stroll around it, and the most urban of activities – to watch
and be watched (see Figure 4.2). This case study broadens notions
about the impact of the Centre Pompidou and highlights how urbanists
can learn from ways, often accidental, in which the project helped
transform the adjacent area.

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Figure 4.1 When completed in 1977, the architecture of the Centre Pompidou was quite revolutionary
for its glass and steel construction, flexible interior spaces, and the location of building services
such as escalators, elevators, air ducts and water pipes on the exterior of the building.
Source: Aseem Inam

Architectural Object and Urban Materiality

In 1969, when French President Georges Pompidou decided to have a
center erected in the heart of Paris devoted to the contemporary arts, he
hoped it would reinvigorate the lower-income, derelict neighborhoods
of Les Halles and Marais, but no concrete strategy for this revitalization
was specified. The winners of an international competition in 1970 for
the Centre Pompidou (thus named after the President’s death), Renzo
Piano and Richard Rogers, focused instead on an architecture of flexible
and open spaces inspired by the spirit of the 1960s. The supporting
structure and infrastructure systems, such as the ventilation ducts
and escalators, are relegated to the outside of the building, thereby

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Figure 4.2 Even though the original designers did not provide any kind of seating in the public
spaces, people continue to be attracted to the plaza and find ways of being comfortable; for
example, in this image, a family using the cobblestone paving as a seat and the polished stone of
the low wall as a backrest to enjoy the sun in front of the Center.
Source: Aseem Inam

freeing up vast areas of interior spaces for display galleries and other
activities. Color-coded ducts are attached to the building’s façades: blue
for ventilation systems, green for water and wastewater, yellow for
electricity cables, and red for pedestrian movement, including elevators
and escalators (see Figure 4.3). The transparent glass-and-steel west
façade allows people to see what is going on inside the center from the
plaza. The other characteristic that set this design apart from the others
in the competition was that half the space allotted was reserved for a
public plaza that had a slight downward slope inward as if to welcome
the crowds to the center.

Indeed, both in its architecture and its urban presence, the Centre
Pompidou is an extremely impressive civic building. The Center

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Figure 4.3 On the side facing the street, the Centre Pompidou’s color-coded pipes and ducts make
its presence felt, even as it aligns with the street edge and almost follows the heights of the
surrounding buildings.
Source: Aseem Inam

contains eight levels, each covering around 81,000 square feet (7,500
square meters), including the art museum with permanent and
temporary galleries (Musée National d’Art Moderne), the public library
(Bibliotheque Public d’Informaton), a library specializing in the life and
work of Kandinsky, two cinemas, two spaces for performances and
conferences, and one studio as well as one gallery for children. Each
year the center holds around thirty public exhibitions, plus international
events such as cinema and documentary screenings, conferences and
symposiums, concerts, dance, and educational activities. The Center
was opened to the public in 1977 at a cost of approximately $200
million (993 million francs), including the cost of land.20

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The Center has been a success as a civic phenomenon: it had one

million visitors in the first seven weeks, and fifty million visitors in its
first seven years. In just ten short years after it opened it was already
attracting much higher numbers of visitors than the Eiffel Tower, the
Acropolis in Athens, and the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
It is a place for Parisians to meet, and along with the Cathedral of
Notre Dame and the Eiffel Tower it is a not-to-be-missed destination
for tourists, an essential part of modern-day Paris. Designed for an
expected maximum of around 7,000 visitors a day, it has often been
invaded by over three times that number.21 In fact, some six million
visitors pass through the Center’s doors each year, an astounding
total of over 190 million visitors in its relatively young thirty-five-year
existence (see Figure 4.4).22 Due to the amount of wear-and-tear the
Center experienced with an overwhelming number of visitors in just its
first twenty years caused the building to close for $80 million worth of
renovations that lasted from 1997 to 1999.

Figure 4.4 The public qualities of the building are not only to be seen in the surrounding open
spaces and the transparent glass façade, but also in the interior, as seen in this image, where
hundreds upon hundreds of Parisians gather on a Friday night in one of the many different reading
sections of the free and easily accessible library.
Source: Aseem Inam

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Accidental Urbanism

The intentions behind the Centre Pompidou were to create a national

center for art and culture and a singular architectural landmark, but its
accidental consequences resulted in a vital and vibrant urbanity that is a
landmark of contemporary urbanism in Paris: “The building of the Center
has led to the rehabilitation of a neighborhood which was formerly one
of the most run-down in Paris. Without Beaubourg [i.e. Centre Pompidou]
the whole neighborhood would have been pulled down.”23 The urban
consequences of the Center may be explored in two interrelated ways:
first, the creation of a diverse and active public realm; and second, the
economic activity generated in the adjacent areas. To better understand
the Centre Pompidou’s contribution to the transformation of the area in
these two ways, one has to begin with the conditions that existed prior to
its construction. The terrain known as the Plateau Beaubourg contained
low-rent, dilapidated housing, small workshops, and cheap shops between

Figure 4.5 What was once a large and foreboding parking lot surrounded by crumbling buildings
has become a vast pedestrian plaza for people to do more or less as they wish.
Source: Giulio Garavaglia

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the not-yet-gentrified Marais and the not-yet-demolished wholesale food

markets of les Halles. The area was known for its prostitution, as well
as having one of the highest tuberculosis rates in France. In the 1930s,
the area was cleared of housing, with the open space of the current site
remaining a forbidden expanse for many years and later used as a parking
lot for trucks serving the nearby food market of Les Halles (see Figure 4.5).24

About two decades after its completion, one journalist described the
vibrant public realm that replaced the terrain vaguely thusly:

Caricaturists, fire-eaters and mummers of all sorts thronged the

piazza beneath its oil-refinery facade of multicolored tubes; tourists
streamed past automatic people-counters to ride the exterior
escalators to the rooftop terrace and its sumptuous view of the city;
Parisians flocked to the city’s first truly public library; and jeaned-
and-ponytailed fauna of all ages hung around the ground-floor
foyer and the free exhibits in the sunken central pit.25

Yet the creation of this particular type of public realm was never among
the original intentions. The architects designed the plaza more as an
experiment where they wanted to install hi-tech (for the era) equipment
such as large television monitors. Although the designers lamented the
eventual decision to not install these features, time eventually proved
that they were not completely necessary because the public filled in
the gaps between the intentions and the consequences. Furthermore,
both architects – Piano and Rogers – envisioned the building more as
a statement: an urban machine, an object-building that would stand in
contrast to its surroundings.26

The plaza in front of the center, called Place Georges Pompidou, was
originally designed without the inclusion of those public amenities
that usually make a public space attractive to throngs of people, such
as benches, kiosks, bicycle racks, and trees. These features were all
later installed. Moreover, a large part of the entire project’s success
and its attraction for visitors is due to its mix of facilities and uses.
For example, while the permanent collection and temporary exhibits
may appeal largely to visitors, the library attracts the many students in
Paris who come to study on a regular basis. Another example is that
both Parisians and visitors take the external escalator to the top of the

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Figure 4.6 The top of the glass tube that contains the escalators is not merely a platform for a
spectacular view of Paris; it is a way to both float above and to be immersed within the material city.
Source: Aseem Inam

building for an unparalleled view of Paris, which used to be free but

now costs a nominal fee. During a visit to the top in 2013, I found that
visitors connected to the surrounding urbanism not just visually but
more viscerally. Perched atop the floating glass tube of the escalators,
one feels completely immersed within the material city and this feeling
is palpable (see Figure 4.6).

Furthermore, a visual connection is created between the striking

exterior glass façade of the Centre Pompidou and the interior of the
building. This architectural decision creates the sense that even when
outside the building, there exists a strong connection to the Center.
During this renovation, the designers tried to further strengthen the

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connection with the city by building new entrances that were added,
as Culture Minister Jacques Toubon put it, “to open the Center toward
the city and turn it into a beating heart at the heart of Paris.”27 While the
building itself evokes resistance, the plaza offers the setting for a
diverse public realm that is inviting for all. Most significantly, what
makes the plaza so inviting is not so much its design; it is the fact that
the authorities allow street performers, whose performances act as
magnets for the crowds.

This perception has been further elaborated upon with the presence
of the colorful and animated figures of the Stravinsky fountain located
on the side of the building. There are colorful sculptures and fountains
by the artists Jean Tinguely and Nicki de St. Phalle between the Centre
Pompidou and the Église St. Merri. The fountains play homage to the

Figure 4.7 People are drawn to the Stravinsky Fountain (with the Centre Pompidou in the background),
where they sit, meet friends, and eat and drink.
Source: Hiroshiken Wang

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composer Stravinsky and are on top of the IRCAM, a below-ground

center for contemporary music. The colorful moving sculptures that
are the fountains serve as visual magnets, inviting people into the
surrounding public space. People then move to the edge of the shallow
pool containing the fountains to touch the water, look at the sculptures
more closely, or to simply sit on the ledges (see Figure 4.7).

The Center has been criticized for its architecture: “the immense futuristic
building, covered with a tangle of brightly colored pipes and ducts,
was criticized by many as an act of vandalism against one of the oldest
quarters of Paris and variously compared to a battleship run aground or
an oil refinery.”28 Furthermore, instead of building a monolithic structure,
many critics called for the decentralized distribution of funds into various
local service projects to improve the run-down neighborhoods of Paris.
While many criticisms focus on the aesthetic features of the building that
have it stand apart from its surroundings and attribute this as the sign of a
power struggle pitting the locals against the large governmental building
that has overtaken the sense of place, a more fitting interpretation
is that the Center thrives in many ways because of its contrast to the
neighborhood. It was with this difference from the narrow, traditional
French decor that the locals as well as tourists could infer that this was
something new, something that is instrumental in shaping the diverse
public realm that exists to this day. In fact, the Center

was never conceived as the beginning of a new city form to spread

and prevail. It was rather an overt, almost shattering contrast
with the city around it, whose effect – like that of the medieval
cathedrals – depended on the city’s never becoming like it. Its
difference of form and scale (really, its monumentality) was one
of its most remarkable and original qualities, reinforced by its site
planning to keep open space around it.29

Paradoxically, this stark contrast with the existing urban fabric contributed
in a large part to its success as an urban landmark that serves not only as a
point of reference in that part of the city but as a gathering spot.

The Centre Pompidou has also generated considerable public

and private investment as well as economic activity, despite no
concrete economic development plans for the area. This includes

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the rehabilitation of old buildings, the introduction of new residential

and office spaces, and new cafés and shops in the adjacent areas
(see Figure 4.8). As a recent trend, the shared interests of cities and
cultural institutions have produced growth spurts in the production and
expansion of cultural facilities. The first building boom occurred in the
1980s, spurred in part by the opening of the Center, which demonstrated
the popular success of a multifunctional and relatively informal and
eclectic cultural destination. In the 1990s, Frank Gehry’s unique design
for the Guggenheim Bilbao ushered in a second phase of museum
construction. Thus, the overwhelming and unanticipated popularity of
the Centre Pompidou has in part encouraged a greater tradition of

Figure 4.8 The surrounding neighborhood has benefitted greatly from the Centre Pompidou, through
not only investments in tourist-oriented businesses such as cafés and gift shops, but also through the
rehabilitation of many crumbling buildings, introduction of new housing, and small neighborhood
businesses such as opticians and even a Christian bookstore.
Source: Nicolas Clairembault

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paying increased attention to the arts as a vital component of

central city redevelopment … These iconic, multi-use and often
large-scale facilities are typically located in the central city and
housed in buildings designed by world-renowned architects,
which in some cases are attractions over and above the art
inside. Municipalities support flagship cultural development in
the belief that such projects will enhance the city image while
catalyzing private sector investment and attracting tourists to their
surrounding area.30

From Object to Urbanity

There are two aspects of this analysis that are relevant to the
discussion of urban transformation in this book. First, conventional
historical analyses of architectural projects often tend to miss
their larger and more significant urban consequences, including
unintended consequences. Second, through careful historical analysis
of the cons­equences and after-effects of a project (rather than only its
design intentions), we can learn much from such accidental successes
in urbanism and integrate these lessons into future projects. The
intentions behind the Centre Pompidou were to create a national
center for art and culture and a singular architectural landmark, but its
accidental consequences resulted in a vital and vibrant urbanity that is
a landmark of contemporary urbanism in Paris. This has had long-term
impacts on other cities as well, as witnessed by the building booms of
urban museums in the 1980s and 1990s.

The vital urbanism generated by the Centre Pompidou provides a social

context for individuals to interact and give new meaning and life to a
neighborhood in Paris. While this project is almost always defined by
the technical and aesthetic choices of the building design, it is really the
people who move in and out, around and through the building as
visitors, participants, and actors who define the public space and the
urban consequences of the building. Certain policy initiatives have
had to be put into effect, such as an active tolerance by authorities
of street artists in the plaza in front of the center. The success of the
center as a cultural magnet not just for tourists but also for Parisians
on an everyday basis has further contributed to the circumstances that

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transformed the center from an iconic object to a vibrant example of

contemporary urbanism:

The lesson one can learn from the success of Beaubourg [i.e. the
Centre Pompidou] is that a combination of the centrality of place,
the physical supports of surrounding pedestrian streets, and the
drawing power of a structure of interest can create a context –
but only a context – for use. It must be further supported by an
appropriate physical arena and open-minded management policy.31

Such a location of urban transformation at the nexus of the material

and immaterial is further explored in the next case study, the India
Habitat Centre.

India Habitat Centre, New Delhi

Can one redesign the city by redesigning its institutions? The India
Habitat Centre is ostensibly a government office building, a project
initiated by the Government of India’s Housing and Urban Development

Figure 4.9 The India Habitat Centre is a hub of constant organized and spontaneous activity, such as this
conference.
Source: CJ Walsh

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 Beyond Intentions: Consequences of Design

Corporation (also known as HUDCO) to house its headquarters. Instead,

it has become a vibrant urban center in the heart of a bustling city, New
Delhi, filled with intellectual, social, and cultural activities that comingle
(see Figure 4.9). Similarly, the radical shift of the design was from office
building to ecological campus.

Begun in 1988 and completed in 1993, the campus was designed by

the architect Joseph Stein and includes one million square feet (97,000
square meters) of interior space over nine acres (3.6 hectares) of land (see
Figure 4.10). To understand the ecological philosophy of this conventional
architectural-turned-transformative-urbanist project, one has to place
it within the larger body of work by Stein, an American architect and
ecologist who dedicated nearly half a century of his life to India and “won
acclaim for marrying his structures to the natural landscape. He favored
buildings that merged into the trees, lawns and ponds surrounding them,
and later in life he became increasingly concerned with protecting the
environment, particularly the Himalayas.” Stein worked closely with the
then chairman of the Housing and Urban Development Corporation to

Figure 4.10 The India Habitat Centre has a striking presence within the material city, with its red brick
walls, concrete panels faced with green tiles, lush vegetation, and views of the interior courtyards from
the street – far from the image of the conventional, bureaucratic and foreboding image of the typical
Indian government office building.
Source: International Pragmatics Association

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Beyond Intentions: Consequences of Design

create an unprecedented work of urbanism for New Delhi. As a member

of the design team, my responsibility was for the programming, design,
and construction of The Energy and Research Institute wing and to work
with its director, Dr. R.K. Pachauri, who went on to win the Nobel Prize in
2007 as Chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. I
thus gained an intimate knowledge of the philosophy, design, and process
of the project.

The Housing and Urban Development Corporation is a semi-

autonomous company owned by the Government of India and
created to undertake housing and urban infrastructure development
programs, provide long-term finance for the construction of housing,
and to finance or directly build new towns as well as enterprises
for construction materials. According to its official report, by 2007,
the Corporation had directly contributed financing and/or technical
assistance to nearly fifteen million dwellings across India, making it
the single largest institutional contribution to housing in the world. The
India Habitat Centre may also be understood as the consequence of
the coming together of two dynamic institutions, the Housing and Urban
Development Corporation and Stein Doshi and Bhalla Architects and
Engineers, and their visionary leaders, S.K. Sharma and Joseph Stein.

Redesigning Institutions, Redesigning Cities

One of the first consequential decisions was to invite a wide range of

housing and infrastructure-related institutions to be part of the Habitat
Centre. These institutions include public agencies such as the Housing
and Development Corporation, the Delhi Urban Art Commission, and
the National Capital Region Planning Board, nonprofit organizations
such as the Centre for Development Studies and Activities and
the Centre for Science and Environment, foundations such as the
Foundation for Universal Responsibility of His Holiness the Dalai
Lama, the MacArthur Foundation, and the National Foundation of
India, private industry organizations such as the Building Materials and
Technology Promotion Council, the Confederation of Indian Industry,
and Infrastructure Leasing and Financial Services Limited, and research
institutes such as the Central Building Research Institute, the National
Institute of Urban Affairs, and the Energy and Research Institute. The

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 Beyond Intentions: Consequences of Design

Figure 4.11 While institutional members of the Center organize or sponsor formal events in the
auditorium and the conference rooms, more informal publicly oriented events occur in the courtyards,
such as this group of schoolchildren drawing.
Source: C B Devgun

India Habitat Centre is most likely one of the only places in the world
where such a rich mix of institutions exist in such close proximity, to the
point of sharing spaces, comingling through a plethora of events, and
engaging in serendipitous encounters (see Figure 4.11).

Another consequential decision was to design a campus of four-to-

seven-storey buildings around landscaped courtyards instead of the
typical stand-alone government building. Facilities such as a library,
meeting rooms, car-parking, and food services are shared between the
institutions, which makes them not only less expensive but also places
of regular encounter. Louvered canopies that let in natural light and air
but block the hottest periods of the Indian sun shade the courtyards. The
micro-climate in the courtyards is further shaped by an abundance of
vegetation and even water (see Figure 4.12). What makes the courtyards
truly work is that visitors and workers have to traverse them to get
to various parts of the campus, rather than go through conventional
corridors. Entrances to public spaces such as building lobbies, art
galleries, and auditoriums are also located off the courtyards.

While the overall urban qualities of the center are remarkable, so

are the details of its architecture (see Figure 4.13). The construction

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Beyond Intentions: Consequences of Design

Figure 4.12 The lush landscaped and semi-covered courtyards not only create temperate microclimates,
but provide an excellent way for workers to go from building to building, thereby generating the
potential for constant social interaction.
Source: von Franziska Fröhlich

is in reinforced concrete with the walls clad in brick. Green tiles as

well as planters mark the tops of buildings. An example of the great
deal of attention paid to the sensory qualities of the campus are the
water channels that collect and distribute the large amounts of rain
during India’s monsoon season. I remember spending hours and days
discussing the intricacies of this water flow with Stein such that we
considered it as a phenomenon to be celebrated and designed rather
than ignored or hidden. In this manner, the materials, textures, colors,
vegetation, and the interplay of natural light and shade make the
experience of the Center vivid and engaging.

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 Beyond Intentions: Consequences of Design

Figure 4.13 The materiality of its architecture contributes significantly to the effectiveness of its
urbanism; for example, in the use of local materials such as brick, tile and stone, and the clear marking
of building entrances through the use of glass, wood, and details such as built-in seats.
Source: Shankar Barua

The India Habitat Centre, as an institution comprising many different

types of institutions, established a governing council composed of
the Habitat Centre President, Habitat Centre Director, a representative
of the Ministry of Urban Development, the Chairman and Managing

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Beyond Intentions: Consequences of Design

Director of Housing and Urban Development Corporation, and

representatives of the various institutions. While several facilities
within the campus such as the library and the art galleries are free
and open to the public, other services – such as the guest-rooms and
restaurants – require institutional, corporate, or individual membership.
Institutions which are already members of the center receive a certain
number of passes for staff based on the amount of office space
occupied, with passes available for an annual fee of 2,500 rupees
per card ($45). Nonprofit organizations from outside the Center can
receive membership with a one-time fee of 75,000 rupees ($1,400) and
individual cards at the cost of 5,000 rupees ($92) annually. The price
for individuals also differs depending on category of membership.
For example, ordinary members who are defined as “individuals with
professional, academic and cultural interests” may obtain membership
at the cost of a one-time entry fee of 30,000 rupees ($550) and an
annual card fee of 2,500 rupees ($46). While it is understandable that a
large campus requires regular sources of revenue for maintenance and
upkeep, unfortunately the structure of such fees tends to be exclusionary
by favoring those who are financially comfortable and/or well connected
(since one has to still go through a membership approval process).

From Government Office Building to Vital Urban Center

The consequences of the particular design of the India Habitat Centre

are that it is

a place that handles transportation and an enormous variety of public

and private activities, from housing to bank to entertainment to food.
A city within a city, it is an intellectual shopping center that provides
[food], great theater, cutting edge art … and wonderful outdoor
spaces that are comfortable even in summer. The India Habitat Centre
has made an extraordinary contribution to the city of Delhi.32

Indeed, one regularly finds dance and music performances, art and
photography exhibitions and workshops, book readings, international
conferences, and even groups of children visiting and drawing at the
center (see Figure 4.14). The Center exudes a vision of urbanism that is
exemplary.

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 Beyond Intentions: Consequences of Design

Figure 4.14 Apart from the many urban policy-related meetings and intellectual conferences, the Center
is a hub of cultural activity as this traditional Indian dance performance – which draws people from all
over the Delhi metropolitan region.
Source: jaijaivantis

As early as the mid-1980s, the vision for the future of cities in India
– as embodied by the Habitat Centre – was broad, and included not
only the material city but regional issues such as the environment,
energy, technology, transportation, communication, cultural norms,
fiscal policies, and legal issues. As knowledge was becoming more
and more specialized, city-design-and-building processes required
crossing disciplinary boundaries and working in more collaborative
ways. The Center tried to create a forum for such a multidisciplinary
and collaborative approach through proximity, shared spaces, and
serendipitous encounters encouraged via its design. What is now
considered a commonplace approach to urbanism was indeed quite
revolutionary at the time. A surprisingly forward-looking revolutionary
vision of the consequences of design is to be found in a project that
is considered by many to be a failure, namely the Big Dig, which is
analyzed next.

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Beyond Intentions: Consequences of Design

Central Artery/Tunnel Project “Big Dig,” Boston

The official narrative regarding the Central Artery/Tunnel Project in

Boston, popularly known as the Big Dig (see Figure 4.15), is justifiably
replete with significance, superlatives, and accomplishments:

Recognized as the largest, most complex, and technologically

challenging highway project in the history of the United States,
the Central Artery/Tunnel Project significantly reduced traffic
congestion and improved mobility in one of America’s oldest
and most congested major cities. In addition, it helped improve
the environment, and established the groundwork for continued
economic growth for Massachusetts and all of New England. The
project replaced Boston’s deteriorating 6-lane elevated Central Artery

Figure 4.15 The Big Dig under construction, with the Boston waterfront in the background and
downtown to the left.
Source: Massachusetts Department of Transportation, Highway Division

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 Beyond Intentions: Consequences of Design

(I-93) with an 8 to 10 lane state-of-the-art underground highway, 2

new bridges over the Charles River, extended I-90 to Boston’s Logan
International Airport, and Route 1A, created more than 300 acres of
open land and reconnected downtown Boston to the waterfront.33

The Big Dig is indeed worthy of both celebration and scrutiny.

There is an alternative, more troubling narrative that reveals another

side to the Big Dig:

Despite its overall successes, as both an infrastructure and

city-building endeavor, the Big Dig is not without criticisms or
failures. The project was originally budgeted at $2.6 billion – its
final costs were over $14.6 billion. It subjected the city’s residents
to 15 years of non-stop construction and a maze of detours. Lack of
sufficient oversight kept taxpayers in the dark about the true costs
of the project for several years. Additional transit projects, including
Metro extensions promised as part of the Dig’s mitigation plans,
remain largely unbuilt. And in 2006, a Boston resident was killed
when a 26-ton section of the I-90 tunnel ceiling collapsed. That
tragedy, and the engineering flaws responsible for it, resulted in a
$450 million lawsuit settlement between the state of Massachusetts,
the Big Dig’s construction management company – Bechtel/Parsons
Brinckerhoff – and other construction firms. A civil suit brought by
the victim’s family against the construction contractors was settled
for $28 million.34

Redesigning Consequences: Creating a Future History

While deeply flawed in many ways, the Big Dig has resulted in a form
of urbanism that reconnects the city both physically and visually,
creates open spaces in the heart of downtown, improved traffic flows,
lowered pollution levels, and substantially raised the value of properties
in its immediate vicinity (see Figure 4.16). The case study draws from
the Pragmatist notion of consequences as inherent to a concept’s
meaning and thereby sheds light on ways in which the consequences
of hardcore infrastructure engineering may be redesigned as
transformative urbanism. This “future history” reimagines how

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Beyond Intentions: Consequences of Design

Figure 4.16 The Big Dig has led to the creation of public open spaces and green urban landscapes in
the heart of Boston where a large elevated metal highway stood for decades.
Source: Aseem Inam

large-scale urban infrastructure can yield a network of much-needed

open spaces, new building types that incorporate recycled construction
materials, create the symbolism of urban potential, and generate
imaginative uses of scarce urban land. I argue in this section that
unexpected benefits and positive ripple effects beyond the project’s
original goals and strict cost/benefit analyses are worthy of our
attention, and that even though the Big Dig is ostensibly complete, the
ongoing design of positive outcomes and future consequences reveals
the potential for creating a future history.

The concept of the “Big Dig” may be perceived as “transportation

infrastructure,” as “government failure,” as “engineering marvel,” or
as “transformative potential,” which is what I propose in this chapter.
Of course, embedded within the concept of “transformative potential”

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 Beyond Intentions: Consequences of Design

are aspects of transportation infrastructure, government failure, as

well as civic infrastructure, government effectiveness, and reverse
engineering. The key idea of reframing the concept of the “Big Dig” as
“transformative potential” is to enable urbanists and designers to not
only examine the gaps, or lack thereof, between goals and outcomes,
but to look more closely at what William James calls the “last things.”35
A key aspect of looking towards fruits and projects is to understand
urban interventions over time. Whereas professional practitioners tend
to conceptualize projects – whether transportation infrastructure or
residential redevelopment – almost solely as three-dimensional objects,
the idea of “fruits” points to the fact that these fruits can emerge and
grow even after the narrowly perceived three-dimensional object is
officially completed. This sense of temporality is an almost never-ending
one and is multi-directional as newer forms of urbanism (even at the
smallest scale) can be generated and regenerated over time. Another
challenging aspect of this sense of temporality is the uncertainty about
when a project is actually completed when outcomes continue to
emerge over time, in both expected and unexpected ways. The point
is to grasp and even embrace this type of uncertainty as a source of
potential to constantly redesign consequences to benefit an increasing
number and variety of citizens, or, in the words of William James, to
focus on truly making a difference.36

Background

The Big Dig is a key transportation link in downtown Boston, a city with
a population of over 600,000, a metropolitan region of a population of
over 4.5 million, and one of the most important political, financial, and
educational centers of the entire northeastern United States. The project
was owned and managed initially by the Massachusetts Highway
Department and then by the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority. Bechtel/
Parsons Brinckerhoff, a joint venture of Bechtel Corporation of San
Francisco and Parsons Brinckerhoff Quade & Douglas Incorporated of
New York, oversaw the technical design, engineering, and construction.
Christian Menn, a Swiss engineer, ultimately designed the now iconic
Leonard Zakim Bunker Hill Memorial Bridge over the Charles River.

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Beyond Intentions: Consequences of Design

The origins of the Big Dig lie with problems encountered with the
Central Artery, which was a portion of Interstate Highway 93 that was
an elevated six-lane highway through the center of downtown Boston.
Construction began in 1951 and finished in 1959, with the 1.5-mile
stretch designed to carry approximately 75,000 vehicles a day. This
grew to 190,000 vehicles by the 1990s, when its traffic crawled for ten

Figure 4.17 The increasing amount of traffic on the Central Artery made it more and more congested,
while the elevated nature of the highway made it a physical and visual barrier between neighborhoods.
Source: © Associated Press

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 Beyond Intentions: Consequences of Design

hours a day and traffic jams of sixteen hours a day were predicted for
2010 (see Figure 4.17).37 The Artery was also an unsightly barrier cutting
off neighborhoods, impeding traffic flow, and separating Boston’s North
End and waterfront neighborhoods from downtown, thus limiting a

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145
Beyond Intentions: Consequences of Design

smoother flow of the city’s economic and social life. Its construction
in the 1950s had displaced more than 20,000 people and led to the
demolition of more than 1,000 structures. Replacing it by building
on the surface would have compounded the problems, crowding
downtown Boston with a horde of construction equipment, cars, and
trucks, operating noisily in clouds of dirt and fumes. So, the design
strategy was to go underground; hence the nickname the “Big Dig.”

Ground for the Big Dig was first broken in 1991, and when the project
was legally concluded on December 31, 2007, it included the following
major components (see Figure 4.18):

• Rerouting of the Central Artery, or Interstate 93, largely through

tunnels under downtown Boston.

• Ted Williams Tunnel, which is an extension of Interstate 90 to

Boston’s Logan International Airport.

• Leonard Zakim Bunker Hill Memorial Bridge over the Charles River,
which is the portion of Interstate 93 to the north of downtown.

• Rose Kennedy Greenway, which consists of four parks totaling

10.5 acres, but which are limited in design and function because
they are built over the tunnels and surrounded by traffic.

• Spectacle Island Park, a 105-acre park in Boston Harbor.

Beneficial consequences

The most widely touted benefits of the Big Dig have been in terms
of transportation, which was the primary goal of the project. A study
published by the Economic Development Research Group in 2006
for the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority highlighted several of these
transportation-related benefits: the project provided approximately $167
million annually in time and cost savings for travelers, including $24
million of savings in vehicle operating costs plus a value of $143 million
in time savings.38 Over half of that time savings value is for work-related
trips, and is viewed as a reduction in costs of doing business in Boston.
For example, the average afternoon peak hour northbound travel time
on Interstate 93 through downtown had dropped from 19.5 minutes to

146
 Beyond Intentions: Consequences of Design

Figure 4.19 Many of the benefits of the Big Dig come from the tunnels to the airport and under
downtown, since they minimize ground level noise and pollution, while freeing up land for parks and
other kinds of mixed use and urban development.
Source: © Associated Press

2.8 minutes, a significant improvement. The opening of the Ted Williams

Tunnel, which is an extension of Interstate 90 to Logan Airport, added
800,000 residents to the 1.7 million who can now access the airport
within a 40-minute drive from their homes (see Figure 4.19).

The second most publicized set of benefits of the Big Dig has been
in terms of real estate development, especially the creation of new
opportunities for development, attraction of new private investment,
and increases in property values. The physical and visual connectivity
with downtown has enhanced development opportunities along the
city’s waterfront and in the South Boston Seaport District. Owners
have reconfigured buildings to open views where they once bricked up
windows, and are renovating property in other newly accessible parts
of Boston. The North End’s Italian restaurants are featuring sidewalk
cafés where they were once concealed from the Artery (see Figure 4.20).

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Beyond Intentions: Consequences of Design

Figure 4.20 Pedestrian paths and open views now reconnect downtown Boston with the historic North
End through the Rose Kennedy Greenway system of parks on top of the tunnels.
Source: Aseem Inam

Commercial properties along the old Artery increased in value by 79

percent in 15 years, nearly double the citywide increase of 41 percent.39
This increase in growth rate of commercial properties is expected to
generate over $3 billion in property value.

These quantitative benefits are impressive, but what of the other, more
nuanced and more qualitative yet significant consequences of the Big
Dig for the city of Boston? One is certainly the stitching together of the
urban fabric, wherein the visual and physical barrier of the elevated
highway that was the Central Artery has been ameliorated to reconnect
neighborhoods and the waterfront. Based on an analysis of newspaper
articles, interviews with visitors and residents, and field observation,
it is clear that it is above all a psychological sense of connectivity
that matters; in other words, just the feeling of being able to look
down a street and see the waterfront instead of the massive columns
supporting the old Artery or knowing that if one wanted, one could
easily walk down one of the many streets and parks in the area.

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 Beyond Intentions: Consequences of Design

Figure 4.21 A view of the Rose Kennedy Greenway with the downtown Boston skyline in the
background.
Source: Aseem Inam

Along the same lines and even more evident are a series of open
spaces created or facilitated by the Big Dig (e.g., parks, plazas,
waterfront redevelopment, and promenades). Some of these open
spaces help increase the values of properties that are immediately
adjacent, but more importantly they facilitate the gathering of people
and its attendant social life that is so vital to any city. Moreover, parks
and open spaces in a central city – such as downtown Boston – play
an important role in enhancing the local environment.40 They provide
recreational opportunities and improve the natural environment,
thereby raising the quality of urban life. In urban centers where the
population is large and land scarce, open spaces are expected to play

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Beyond Intentions: Consequences of Design

an even larger role. The Rose Kennedy Greenway is a series of parks

with water features and other amenities that were constructed in
the path of the old elevated Central Artery from Chinatown through
the Wharf District and North End (see Figure 4.21). Major shoreline

Figure 4.22 A view of the Big Dig House, designed by the architectural firm, Single Speed, and made
from recycled materials of the Central Artery elevated highway.
Source: © Associated Press

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 Beyond Intentions: Consequences of Design

restoration has been completed in the Charles River Basin, Fort Point
Channel, Rumney Marsh, and Spectacle Island, as well as in significant
stretches of the Boston Harbor walk. Visitors also enjoy the park and
pathways at the 105-acre Spectacle Island.

Surprising and unexpected benefits have emerged out of the Big Dig.
One example is the rebirth of Spectacle Island, and its new park, once
the home of a solid waste landfill and a neglected mountain of tainted
land, came with the Big Dig and the island being chosen as the home
for about one-third of the project’s excavated soil. Supported by a
base of topsoil, a new landscape planted with thousands of trees and
shrubs has taken shape on the island.41 A second example is the Big
Dig House, whose basic structure is entirely made up of three tons
of salvaged steel and concrete from the Big Dig (see Figure 4.22). The
materials were obtained for free, and the client, Paul Pedini (whose firm
had worked on the Big Dig for a decade), was able to do much of the
construction himself, and the house, which measures 4,300 square feet,
was built at the strikingly low cost of approximately $175 per square
foot.42 Yet the house is striking and elegant, has won architectural
awards, and has brought its designers, the firm Single Speed, a level
of acclaim. What if these types of unexpected consequences of large
infrastructure projects, such as using excavated soil to fill landfills and
creating new parks and recycling old construction materials for new
buildings, were designed systematically and from the beginning into
future projects? The consequences for cities could be enormous.

Designing Future Consequences

The Big Dig is an extremely large, time-consuming, and complex

project in the heart of a bustling city. Both the project’s supporters and
detractors point to the often-unprecedented construction challenges
as a sign of accomplishment on the one hand, and as a partial
reason for its enormous delays and cost overruns. For example, the
construction of the Interstate 90 extension involved some of the most
complicated and challenging engineering, including tunnel jacking,
the construction of a casting basin for immersed tube tunneling, and
cut-and-cover tunnel construction.43 The reconstruction of Interstate
93 through downtown Boston was also enormously complex. Before

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Beyond Intentions: Consequences of Design

Figure 4.23 An image of the iconic Zakim Bridge, a highly visible symbol of 21st-century Boston. The
design of the tops of the pylons is inspired by the historic Bunker Hill monument.
Source: Aseem Inam

heavy construction began, utilities had to be relocated and mitigation

measures put in place. Then slurry wall construction began in the
mid-1990s, which required underpinning of the existing elevated Central
Artery before excavation.

The results of overcoming these challenge, albeit at great cost, include

a much faster flow of traffic through downtown, enhanced access to
the airport, increased real estate development opportunities in the
area, the stitching together of an urban fabric that was interrupted by
an elevated highway, and a series of open spaces in the heart of the city
and on the waterfront. There are also unexpected consequences, such
as the use of excavated soil to create a new park for people to enjoy and
a house built out of recycled materials from the old elevated highway.
However, the most significant consequences may be symbolic.

One tangible symbol is the Zakim Bridge, which is the first bridge in
the country to employ an asymmetrical and hybrid steel and concrete

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 Beyond Intentions: Consequences of Design

design, and is the widest cable-stayed bridge in the world. The Bridge
serves quite effectively as a northern gateway to the city, and in many
cases has become an icon of 21st-century Boston, seen frequently as
the backdrop in numerous television news programs (see Figure 4.23).

Another aspect of its symbolic consequences is as a triumph of

engineering, but not in the conventional sense. Some writers have
called the Big Dig a triumph of postmodern engineering over modernist
hubris, but for Rosalind Williams, a professor of science and technology
at MIT, the Big Dig symbolizes reverse engineering in the best sense:
correcting the grievous error of an elevated highway that cut through
the heart of a city, blocked views and access to neighborhoods, and
resulted in severe traffic jams.44 For Brendan Patrick Hughes, the
project’s “true significance is in its representation of the idea of a city,
of a transformed Boston that’s as real as the defective concrete inside
the tunnel’s leaking walls.”45
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Beyond Intentions: Consequences of Design

In the book Public Works: Unsolicited Small Projects for the Big Dig,
architect J. Meejin Yoon asks pointedly, “What are the consequences
of the Big Dig and what are its unrealized potentials?”46 She responds
imaginatively by proposing a series of hypothetical projects that
would further the consequences of the Big Dig. Projects include a
tri-panel rotating paver that alternates between asphalt, hard court,
and turf surfaces; large exhaust vents for the tunnels that also serve
as air scrubbers, wind power collectors, and armatures for plant
life; and perhaps most imaginatively, “tree traps,” which are mobile
and mechanized tree planters that move to block traffic and give
pedestrians right-of-way along the parks that constitute the Kennedy
Greenway.

One project stands out as being both highly imaginative and extremely
feasible. Called “Un-Fill,” it makes efficient use of land by occupying the
section between the surface and the tunnels with underground parking
(see Figure 4.24). The schematic design is based on the same degree of
creativity and complexity that was required to design and build the Big
Dig’s many tunnels, ventilation shafts, ramps, bridge, and all the utilities
that are required to make it work on a daily basis (e.g., electricity,
ventilation systems, communication systems). What this approach
suggests is that the Big Dig is a symbol of what we are capable of
designing even after the project is ostensibly finished. There may be
even more consequences to come.

This case study shows that the Big Dig is both a material enactment
and a representation of the possibilities of urban transformation. The
question often asked of this fifteen-year, $14.6 billion endeavor is: Was
it worthwhile? That is clearly an important question to ask in terms
of lessons for future infrastructure projects in cities. In addition, we
should ask: How can we now make it worthwhile? In other words,
how do we now redesign the Big Dig to create even more worthwhile
consequences? While we should learn from the extraordinary cost
and time overruns and some poor-quality construction, we would also
do well to investigate what was gained in terms of its considerable
transformative potential, what is still hoped for, and what futures we
can design. We can design deliberatively for consequences, in keeping
with Charles Peirce’s idea that the meaning of a conception is also
constituted by the sum of its practical consequences. Thus, the Big Dig

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 Beyond Intentions: Consequences of Design

may continue to be conceptualized as “transformative urbanism,” rather

than simply as “transportation infrastructure.”

Practicing the Design of Consequences

Each of the case studies in this chapter illustrates the Pragmatist idea
of consequences of design in a different manner. With the India Habitat
Centre, the primary consequence for the city is the creation of a vibrant
new urban center that has government and nonprofit agencies sharing
space, is a venue for serious intellectual and policy discussions, art
galleries and performance spaces, and even a place where children visit.
All of this is accomplished in a highly sensitive and meticulous design
that is actually “sustainable” without feeling the need to shout from the
rooftops that it is “sustainable”, by building upon modest yet millennia-old
traditions of climatically and ecologically sensitive design in India.

Since the completion of the Centre Pompidou, many local governments

have paid increasing attention to the arts as a vital component of
central city redevelopment. One of the most prevalent strategies in this
regard has been to invest in flagship museums and art centers. These
iconic, multi-use, and often large-scale facilities are typically located in
the central city and housed in buildings designed by world-renowned
architects. The first building boom occurred in the 1980s, spurred in part
by the 1977 opening of the Centre Pompidou, which demonstrated the
popular success of a multifunctional and relatively informal and eclectic
cultural destination – even if that was not originally the intention of the
project. Perhaps the most interesting insight from the Centre Pompidou
case study is the accidental urbanism that the architectural project has
generated, thereby enriching the surrounding neighborhood as well as
the rest of the city.

In answer to the question of: how do we now redesign the Big Dig to
create even more worthwhile consequences?, Meejin Yoon suggests
we could continue to design ongoing projects for the Rose Kennedy
Greenway and the adjacent lands such that there is potential for future
consequences which continue to transform downtown Boston. In other
words, the most significant transformation may be to reconceptualize
the Big Dig as a potentially never-ending project.

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Beyond Intentions: Consequences of Design

In light of the Charles Peirce quote at the beginning of this chapter,

what Pragmatism offers is a powerful framework of how to consider the
consequences of design both as material and immaterial structures. We
invent concepts and objects that we implement in the urban context,
and we can then look towards their consequences as an integral part of
the design process. Once this has been achieved, greater openness and
responsibility may be accorded towards objects, concepts, and their
effects over time. Openness implies being willing not only to consider
but to reintegrate unexpected outcomes of design strategies, while
responsibility suggests proactive stewardship of the impacts of urbanist
interventions. An emphasis on time is essential when understanding the
consequences of design, in which urbanism is an ongoing verb rather
than a definitive noun, and transformation is inherent to the process.
In this ongoing process, we pay close attention to the consequences
– whether intended or not, whether historic or contemporary – of
design and reintegrate those insights into our creative thinking. One
powerful way to accomplish this is to embrace urbanism as a creative
political act that engages with a city’s most significant decision-making
processes.

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5
Beyond Practice: Urbanism
as Creative Political Act
The conventional view of urbanism is as a narrowly defined
professional practice. The practice of urbanism that emerges out of
fields such as architecture and city planning relies on specific and
institutionalized bodies of knowledge and skills, which are cultivated
types of expertise through codified pedagogies and professional
institutes. The essence of such practices, and indeed lifelong careers,
is that impetus for working on new initiatives and projects comes from
others – a client, patron, design competition, or request for proposals –
typically with a given set of predetermined parameters. When it comes
to the spatial political economy of the city, conventional practitioners
typically accept constraints such as location, budget, program, and
purpose of project. Even supposedly more innovative approaches, that
involve community participation or create sustainable development, are
based on this essential model of client- and task-driven practice which
accepts the current conditions and constraints of the city. For urbanism
to truly engage with the much more influential politics of the city (e.g.,
uncovering who makes critical decisions and why, or how resources are
allocated and priorities determined), the task is to not only challenge
and change the parameters of projects for the better, but also ultimately
create alternative sets of parameters that lead to urban transformation.

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The 20th century witnessed the codification of practices in professional

fields like urban design, landscape architecture, architecture, and city
planning. Such professionalization allowed for the social construction
of expertise and the specialization of knowledge and skills that yielded
often spectacular aesthetic and spatial results in our cities. This mode of
professionalized and codified practice continues to dominate the field.
What is missing from this way of thinking is a sensibility of the larger
potential and deeper understanding of practice that can transform cities
in radical ways. This requires questioning fundamental assumptions
about the production of the material city, the urban decision-making
structures that tend to privilege those who already have power, and
city-building processes that favor the finished product over the quality
of the courses of action.

In reality, city-design-and-building processes are inherently political.

These processes involve the allocation of scarce resources, which is
political because it engages multiple stakeholders and thousands of
residents with multiple and often conflicting interests. In addition, as
discussed in Chapter 1, the design and building of the material city
occurs within the larger spatial political economy and is therefore
part of a system. Understanding city-design-and-building processes
within this decision-making system and power structure is crucial for
urbanism. What makes city-design-and-building processes appear
complex, messy, and elusive is that rarely does one individual
organization control the city-building process, and even when there
is such an organization (e.g., local government), it rarely has either
the power or resources to effectively control all the outcomes. In the
contemporary city, a variety of actors and institutions in the public,
private, and nonprofit sectors pursue their own interests and constantly
jostle for control.

Urbanists require effective ways of engaging with such messy

complexity, rife as it is with multiple and often conflicting stakeholders,
power structures that usually privilege certain types of interests over
others, and values such as profit motives and privatism1 that tend to
crowd out other values such as collective interests and democracy.
One powerful way to do so is to acknowledge and render explicit that
in pursuing certain courses of action we implicitly make moral choices.
Urbanism may be practiced as a creative, political act that relies on

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 Beyond Practice: Urbanism as Creative Political Act

reflective and explicit moral choices. We make moral choices every day
as we reach decisions and choose courses of action. At the level of the
city, the prioritization among multiple purposes, the allocation of scarce
resources, the involvement of thousands of citizens, and the long-term
impacts of intervention all involve difficult moral choices.

An example of making moral choices is the serious and systemic issue

of the lack of affordable housing in virtually every major city in the
world. The standard design approach to affordable housing is to find
creative ways of designing smaller and cheaper units through design
innovations and construction technologies such as prefabricated and
modular units. However, several decades of using this approach have
not provided real options for the extremely poor or for working-class
households. A transformative urbanist would make the moral choice of
asking the difficult yet deeper questions about why there is a systemic
shortage of affordable housing in the first place, and why low-income
residents always seem to be relegated to poor-quality housing
and living environments. Such systemic thinking enables engaged
practice. This chapter lays out a framework and provides examples
that demonstrate how moral choices can be made for the practice of
urbanism to be a creative political act.

Conceptual Shift: From Urban Practice to

Moral Choices and Political Acts
Moral choice becomes always a matter of compromise between
competing goods rather than a choice between absolutely right
and wrong … We stake our sense of who we are on the outcome of
such choices … [For Pragmatists], moral struggle is continuous with
the struggle for existence, and no sharp break divides the unjust
from the imprudent, the evil from the inexpedient. What matters
for [P]ragmatists is devising ways of diminishing human suffering
and increasing human equality, increasing the ability of all human
children to start life with an equal chance of happiness.2

What initially appears to be a simple statement by Richard Rorty is

upon closer examination quite profound. Serious moral choices, such
as designing for profit versus designing for public benefit, cannot

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be reduced to a simple calculation; rather, these choices are deep

discussions of what is worthwhile to do: “All discussions between
human beings, one way or another, are about what’s worthwhile …
Discussion of what to do is discussion of what is worthwhile to do.”3 In
other words, as human beings it is an underestimation of our power
and agency to say that we engage with our work as “simply a job.” For
urbanists, it is important to consider how the production and creation
of the city is a political process writ with moral choices small and large,
especially since what we create and produce has concrete political and
moral implications. When we pay attention to how this reality actually
unfolds, we have tremendous power to make our own lives and the
world a markedly better place, “by diminishing suffering and increasing
human equality, and increasing the ability of all human children to start
life with an equal chance of happiness.”4

For Pragmatists such as James and Rorty, however, the paths towards
the achievement of such admirable ends are not clear-cut; rather, it is a
moral struggle to get there. What emerges from these struggles comes
about through the use of imaginative power and may result in what
Pragmatists call moral progress, which is “increased sensitivity and
responsiveness to the needs of larger and larger varieties of people
and other living beings.”5 Urbanists are especially well positioned
to apply imaginative power in political ways to bring about moral
progress. One of the unique abilities that urbanists bring forth is the
power of imagination through their training in creative thinking and
visualization skills, especially by envisioning radically alternative
realities that would yield a much-improved city of the future. Due to a
mix of interdisciplinary approaches and creative thinking, urbanism is
therefore uniquely positioned among disciplines and fields to redesign
city-design-and-building processes beyond the established norms of
rigid disciplinary boundaries and cutting-edge spatial configurations.

Indeed, urbanists from a variety of fields such as architecture, landscape

architecture, urban design and city planning wield tremendous power
and potential to change current reality, as Sharon Zukin reminds us:

We owe the clearest cultural map of structural change not to

novelists or literary critics, but to architects and designers.
Their products, their social roles as cultural producers, and the

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 Beyond Practice: Urbanism as Creative Political Act

organization of consumption in which they intervene create shifting

landscapes in the most material sense.6

Even the large numbers of practicing urbanists who claim to be

non-political actually reinforce current economic and political power
structures by conforming to norms of market-driven investment of
production and consumption.7 Due to this situation, there is in fact
a clear yet largely unacknowledged connection between politics and
design that possesses the possibility to reshape cities in radical ways.

Urbanists also symbolize and express power when they design

and build processes, buildings, and spaces. Architecture is one
especially important way in which cultural values and political power
are concretized, where meaning and political purpose is not only
represented physically in the form of the material city, but is also
always under negotiation. Human beings create and perceive symbols
that

condense a wide range of individual fears, hopes and cognitions

into … a narrow set of socially reinforced perceptions [and] for
such condensation symbolism to gain its hold on people’s minds
it seems necessary to objectify beliefs in some entity, visible or
imagined, that has no sematic content in itself … [I]n politics such
terms as divine will, the public interest, communism, democracy,
and justice serve that symbolic purpose, but so do widely
known buildings, spaces, and public figures that are accepted as
objectifying some aspect of the polity or the social order.8

While the design of buildings and urban spaces can contribute to social
integration, there are also conflicting beliefs present. Different interest
groups and power situations will produce and value different aspects
of the city, creating a pluralistic atmosphere of political debate and
discourse.

Most visions of the city carry particular political implications. According

to David Harvey, it is “hard to untangle the grubby day-to-day practices
and discourses that affect urban living from the grandiose metaphorical
meanings that so freely intermingle with the emotions and beliefs
about the good life and urban form.”9 In other words, the form of the

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material city cannot be separated from social and political visions of

what the city could be.

Throughout history, the very concept of “city” has carried a freight of

meanings that are deeply connected to social and political actualities,
including when “urban planners, engineers, and architects of the
twentieth century set about their tasks by combining an intense
imaginary of some alternative world (both physical and social) with
a practical concern for engineering and re-engineering urban and
regional spaces according to radically new designs.”10

Other urban scholars have explored ways in which the economy of

the city is connected to larger questions of politics and design, as
John Logan and Harvey Molotch do in their book Urban Fortunes: The
Political Economy of Place. The formal qualities of the material city,
they argue, do not inevitably unfold according to predetermined rules
or guidelines of a market; instead, urban processes are relational.
In this manner, the present form of material cities may be explained
by the histories of specific economic stakeholders as they contend
for political power.11 Moreover, the city may also be understood as a
growth machine in which “conditions of community life are largely a
consequence of the social, economic, and political forces embodied in
this growth machine.”12

The idea of the growth machine helped reverse the course of urban
theory by pointing out that land parcels were not empty fields awaiting
human action, but were associated with specific interests, in particular
commercial and even psychological concerns. Especially important in
shaping contemporary cities are the real estate interests of those whose
properties gain value when growth takes place and it is these who
make up the local growth machine. Thus, the relationship between the
material city and the political dynamics of the city are often most clearly
expressed in a number of realms, such as land policies and markets
and local government’s political and bureaucratic circuits that heavily
influence public investments and regulations. Moreover, any future
urban processes and politics need to attend to the unique situations
and contexts of particular cities and neighborhoods, as the three case
studies in this chapter will demonstrate.

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 Beyond Practice: Urbanism as Creative Political Act

At the same time, the politics of urbanism are not immutable. Through
creative and strategic intervention in a given context there is always
a possibility to invent new processes, traditions, and ultimately a
new urban reality. The historian Eric Hobsbawm explains that much
of what we take for granted in daily life may be more contingent on
political or economic conditions and less historically contingent than
we have come to believe. His work on invented traditions shares much
in common with Pragmatist concepts of contingency, described in
Chapter 2. Hobsbawn writes:

insofar as there is such reference to a historic past, the peculiarity

of invented traditions is that the continuity with it is largely
fictitious. In short, they are responses to novel situations which take
the form of reference to old situations, or which establish their own
past by quasi-obligatory repetition.13

In essence, there is room for far more creativity than we may presently
imagine because each new tradition – or established method of action
or practice – has been invented due to a creative response to given
conditions, and thus urbanists always possess the radical possibility of
creating new and transformative traditions for designing and building
cities.

Similarly, moral progress should be seen to be free from any

unchanging sense of tradition, as Richard Rorty notes:

Moral progress is not, in this [P]ragmatist view, a matter of getting

clearer about something that was there all the time. Rather, we
make ourselves into new kinds of people by inventing new forms
of human life. We make progress by having more alternatives to
consider.14

The three case studies that follow – the Uptown Whittier Specific Plan
in Los Angeles, the Parque da Terceira Agua in Belo Horizonte, and
the Orangi Pilot Project in Karachi – are three different approaches to
urbanism as a creative political act in which moral progress is made
through the creation of alternatives that may seem modest at first
glance, but are in fact quite radical within each context.

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Beyond Practice: Urbanism as Creative Political Act

Uptown Whittier Specific Plan, Whittier

The Uptown Whittier Specific Plan not only represents strategic

intervention in the typical form of American urbanism but also how
that contemporary form is entrenched within a deeper automobile-
oriented culture of the city. The City of Whittier is a modest-sized
15-square mile (40-square kilometer) city with about 90,000 residents
within the Los Angeles metropolitan region and part of an automobile-
oriented culture that is highly resistant to efforts towards making the
city more walkable, affordable, and ultimately more humane. One of
the touchstones of practicing urbanism as a creative political act is to
pursue radical change in difficult contexts of resistance, rather than only
in settings where people and circumstances are already amenable to
transformation.

The goal of the Uptown Whittier Specific Plan (henceforth referred to as

the Uptown Plan) was to attract further investment, generate economic
development, and create a higher quality of design and mixed-use
development in the historic urban core, known as Uptown Whittier.
Our firm, Moule & Polyzoides Architects and Urbanists, was selected
through a competitive process because we were known for two critical
strategies: working with the existing urban fabric in sensitive ways,
and being able to pull together large numbers of multiple stakeholders
in a transparent manner. I led the project and was responsible for
the entire process, including coordinating a multidisciplinary design
team, working with local government officials, conducting community
outreach and collaboration, budgeting and managing the design
process, and producing all the details of the final Uptown Plan,
which was adopted as a legal document by the Whittier City Council
on November 8, 2008 and continued to be modified thereafter (see
Figure 5.1).

The City presented a fairly generic list of issues to be addressed in

the Uptown Plan, such as vehicular circulation and parking, land
use, zoning and density, historic compatibility, design form, and
infrastructure capacity. Our conversations with the political leadership
and administration, however, made it clear that the real intention was to
generate economic development (e.g., to attract and retain businesses

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 Beyond Practice: Urbanism as Creative Political Act

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as well as real estate investment) through urbanism. Another discovery

we made through the process was that while our firm, Moule &
Polyzoides, was selected by the City to design the future of Uptown
Whittier in a highly transparent manner, our efforts to promote
transparency in the design process were constantly challenged by
the City. In the midst of such ambiguity and contradiction, we pushed
ahead with the project, making many difficult moral choices along the
way. For example, as project leader I was in constant dialogue with
local city officials who questioned our transparent and participatory
design strategies because this transparent nature in effect challenged
the power and control to which city officials were accustomed.

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Beyond Practice: Urbanism as Creative Political Act

Creating Constituencies and Leveraging Parking

This case study analysis of the Uptown Plan focuses on two types of
creative political acts: the first was to create a political constituency
for humane urbanism where none had existed before, and the second
was to leverage a key feature of the automobile-oriented city – parking
– to paradoxically transform its future as far more pedestrian-oriented.
Through the design process, we worked closely with communities so
that they might assert themselves through local government initiatives
in design and development, and hold their elected officials accountable
for the quality of urbanism in Whittier. Moreover, we capitalized on
the fact that the vast majority of community leaders and residents
expressed their belief that a lack of adequate parking in Uptown Whittier
was a priority, to then design a parking strategy which – once again
paradoxically – actually reduced the amount of parking by situating car
parks in more strategic locations, designing a management strategy,
using it to generate much-needed revenue, and ultimately, by making
parking part of a larger design for a compact, walkable, mixed-use, and
pedestrian-friendly district.

The two aspects of this case study – creating constituencies and

leveraging parking – are interrelated in a fascinating manner. The lack
of adequate parking that citizens expressed as a major concern turned
out to be rather a lack of parking where people wanted it to be located
(e.g. usually right in front of the buildings they are visiting, where
everyone else also wants to park) and when people wanted it (e.g.,
usually at times that are most convenient, which is also at peak times
for everyone else). Our studies revealed that there were too many
parking spaces in relation to the actual demand in Uptown Whittier (see
Figure 5.2), and the real challenge was to distribute and manage fewer
parking spaces while providing alternative means of transportation
such as walking, biking, and public transit. We leveraged such major
concerns and technical aspects of the Uptown Plan to generate
much-needed public dialogue and mobilize communities in Whittier.
Furthermore, the technical details designed as parking guidelines,
standards, and systems will actually shape the area for decades in
a much more significant manner than the singular and spectacular
projects that conventional designers and urbanists tend to cherish.

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 Beyond Practice: Urbanism as Creative Political Act

Dispersing Power Through Participatory Processes

The first step was to design an intensive process of public engagement,

including an exhaustive set of interviews, focus groups, public
meetings, group site visits, and a week-long public design charrette
where critical decisions were made on site and in public (see
Figure 5.3). We designed the public process to work directly with the
City of Whittier through the Mayor, City Council, Planning Commission,
Design Review Board, and Planning Staff in focused work sessions.
We also made a real effort to reach out to nonprofit organizations,
community groups, and citizens through individual meetings and focus
groups with a total of 112 individuals and thirty-seven groups, which is
remarkable for an area that houses only about thirty-five city blocks.

At the same time, early on in the process, we expressed serious

concerns within our design team about how transparent and committed
the City actually was to the participatory process we had designed.15
While leaders in the city were used to getting things done largely by
leveraging their concentrated power, we hoped to disperse power as

Figure 5.2 Photograph of a relatively empty existing surface parking lot in what is considered to be the
densest and most walkable part of the city of Whittier, the Uptown district.
Source: Aseem Inam

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Beyond Practice: Urbanism as Creative Political Act

Figure 5.3 Residents were actively involved in the week-long public design charrette (i.e., workshop),
where they challenged the design team’s ideas and contributed suggestions to critical decisions.
Source: Aseem Inam

widely as possible. For example, Whittier has a tradition of numerous

churches dedicated to providing social services such as job training,
homeless shelters, and feeding the poor. We engaged the churches and
their social services in numerous ways. We talked to religious leaders
about their concerns, and asked them to consider converting their
numerous parking lots to affordable housing while shifting the vehicles
to the proposed shared parking structures. In the process, we catalyzed
a kind of cooperation among the various churches that had not been
seen before in the city.

While such efforts were paramount in developing a more participatory

process, there were continued challenges in navigating Whittier’s local
politics. The City Manager insisted on calling the project the “Moule &
Polyzoides Plan” throughout the entire process, even though its official

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 Beyond Practice: Urbanism as Creative Political Act

name was the “Uptown Whittier Specific Plan.” By constantly calling it

the “Moule & Polyzoides Plan” rather than the “Uptown Plan,” the City
Manager and the administration were deflecting responsibility for the
Plan and undermining the collaborative process we had put in place.
For example, the City Manager wrote to a citizen that the

Plan is merely a consultant’s 100% draft at this point. Both the

City Council and Planning Commission have read it and asked
questions, but it is not within their purview at this point to modify
his work product that [the consultant] is contractually obligated to
deliver. That evaluation and any proposed modifications that result
from it are really a part of the public process that has yet to start.16

This was patently untrue, since the City Manager made this claim a full
year after we had begun the public process and after the public draft of
our proposal had been delivered to the Planning Department.

We found that the single biggest hurdle to the design process was in
fact the City Manager and his budget. In an email he wrote: “Basically, I
just want each of the financial pieces – landscaping, parking structures,
meters, etc. with the person or group responsible for paying it, the
method to collect the funds (i.e. assessment district, developer fees)
and what steps I have to go through to bind them to pay the price.”17
At other times it seemed as if we were being asked to cost his budget
ourselves: “Do you have a flow of funds that shows the effects on each
sub-unit in the city along with the financing scenario that demonstrates
our ability to issue bonds against the tax increment so that the money
is there when we need it?”18 In essence, the City wanted to push all of
the financial responsibility onto the design team. We had a huge debate
in my firm over whether we should go beyond our responsibilities as
designers and do whatever it took to see the project through. I felt sure
that we should, although I also knew that this would require a great
deal of perseverance.

Parking and Transformative Urbanism

Another challenge we faced was bringing about significant change in a

politically and socially conservative setting. The city of Whittier is part of

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the Los Angeles metropolitan region in the heart of southern California,

a region widely known throughout the world for its low-density
land-use-segregated and automobile-oriented patterns of urban growth,
popularly known as “sprawl.” Moreover, its automobile culture is
deeply ingrained, with the car serving as a symbol of social status and
personal expression. This is seen in the material city with its extensive
network of high-speed highways, wide streets, and ubiquitous parking.
The challenge for us was to introduce a more humane and pedestrian-
oriented urbanism in this context. We did so by being strategic and
utilizing a key component of the existing fabric – parking – to generate
mixed land uses, higher densities, and a walkable urban environment.

Without appropriate parking standards, contextual regulations, and

site-sensitive design, parking can be one of the most prohibitive
elements in creating vibrant cities and humane environments.
Conventionally designed parking lots and garages are extremely
unattractive and create gaps in the built fabric, and multiple curb cuts
and driveways into both are hazardous to pedestrians and bicycles.
From a land-use perspective, excessive parking takes up space that
can be better utilized. Parking standards and regulations in American
cities since the 1950s have contributed to a number of negative
consequences, including the following:19

• Lack of housing affordability: Each parking space linked with a

residential unit typically increases the cost of that unit by up to
20 percent and decreases the number of units that may be built
on a typical lot by up to 20 percent.

• Decreased walkability and transit connectivity: Parking

requirements are the greatest single determinant for achievable
density. When density is reduced, opportunities are reduced for
providing services within walking distance and for the viability
of convenient public transit.

• Increased traffic congestion: When the costs of parking are

hidden in the cost of rent or goods and services, the result
is a strong incentive to drive. Even in suburban locations,
automobile trip generation rates can be reduced by 15 to 40
percent by eliminating parking subsidies.

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 Beyond Practice: Urbanism as Creative Political Act

• Suburban bias in urban locations: Parking demand data have

generally been from isolated, single-use locations without
substantial transit service or pedestrian amenities. These
worst-case scenarios are then erroneously applied towards
minimum standards in mixed-use, higher-density, pedestrian-
friendly contexts.

How does one bring about radical change in an area that is so deeply
embedded in highly conventional post-World War II patterns of sprawling
urban growth? In the Uptown Plan, we described this path through
step-by-step increments that make such change feasible and palatable.20
In the immediate term (i.e., within one year of the Plan being adopted),
we aimed to facilitate turnover of existing parking spaces and generate
revenue for the upkeep of Uptown Whittier’s public realm. To accomplish
this, parking meters and currently unenforced parking limits for curbside
parking on primary retail and commercial streets would be strictly
enforced. The Park Once district (i.e., a parking management strategy
described further below) would be implemented to provide centralized
and shared parking options within walking distance of many downtown
attractions. The short-term tasks (i.e., between one and five years of the
Plan’s adoption) called for the installation of solar-powered street parking
payment machines in the highest demand areas on the primary retail
streets. In addition, the Plan slated the idea that existing and under-used
parking structures be refurbished with an additional Park Once shared
parking structure to be built. In the medium term (i.e., between five
and ten years following adoption of the Plan), two to four Park Once
structures could be built as parking demand increases, land becomes
available, and increased investment flows into Uptown. Finally, in the
long term (i.e., between ten and twenty years after adoption), the City of
Whittier would recover much of its operating costs, especially through
parking ticket revenues. Any leftover revenues would be used to pay for
services, programs, and events, including one or more of the following:

• regular cleaning and power washing of sidewalks;

• landscape maintenance (e.g., trees, planters, ground cover

vegetation);

• “Uptown Ambassadors” program to assist visitors and provide

safety through “eyes on the street”;

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Beyond Practice: Urbanism as Creative Political Act

• improved street lighting;

• special events, such as arts or music festivals;

• education programs for small businesses to increase their

profitability.

In addition, working collaboratively with civil engineers, economists,

and public officials, the Moule & Polyzoides team developed size and
cost estimates for the design of future shared parking structures, and
identified public and private funding sources. Although actual locations
of Park Once structures were to be determined in the future by market
forces and development patterns, the establishment of development
thresholds guided implementation (e.g., a Park Once structure for
approximately 80,000 square feet of new retail and commercial
development), allowing flexibility while keeping overall intent clear.21
Calculating a 600-foot radius pedestrian shed and approximately 240
spaces for each structure, the Plan presents a scenario for how new
structures may be built on an as-needed basis over a twenty-year
period. Funding for these structures could be accomplished either with
increased revenues generated by the city in charging for its existing
parking and/or as part of public/private development agreements.22
While many urbanists may choose to be indifferent to such issues of
funding, we felt that a strategy for capital investment was absolutely
essential to obtaining spectacular results in the long term, especially
since it was also the greatest concern of the most powerful public
official in Whittier, the City Manager.

A significant aspect of the design of a Park Once system is its

management, especially accurate pricing and the charging of variable
fees. Uptown Whittier provided two hours of free parking in prime
on-street locations such as the primary and secondary streets,
Greenleaf Avenue and Philadelphia Street. When parking is provided
without apparent cost, employees tend to occupy valuable spaces, such
as those in front of their stores and offices. Spaces that could otherwise
generate significant retail revenue are occupied for hours by those who
will not necessarily be patronizing restaurants and businesses.23 The
revenue generated by parking fees may be utilized to finance district
improvements, including landscape investments, trash collection,
frequent street cleaning, and public safety services. The Uptown Plan

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 Beyond Practice: Urbanism as Creative Political Act

further proposed the installation of solar-powered electronic payment

machines for on-street parking. The primary purpose of these machines
was to allow flexible pricing to help maintain a constant vacancy rate as
parking demand fluctuated over time.

The designation of a Park Once management district was a creative

strategy to catalyze long-term change in the urban fabric of Uptown
Whittier. It is defined spatially in the Plan as a district to be organized
and managed by the municipal government. In addition to pricing
strategies and revised parking regulations, the Park Once district
consists of several parking structures integrated into the town
center, where one can “park once” and walk to multiple destinations,
reducing the need for multiple individual car journeys and separate
parking dedicated to each type of land use and building. Park Once
complements the mix of residential and retail uses, since vehicular trips
are combined or replaced by walking to multiple retail stores and other
destinations in the same area.24 Park Once accomplishes three goals
simultaneously. First, it reduces the quantity of parking required for
each use through shared parking, for example, on the street, on small
surface lots, and within structures. Second, it maximizes the efficiency
of shared parking structures, where spaces may be used, for example,
for shopping and working during the day, cultural and leisure activities
in the evening, and for residents of Uptown to park overnight. Third, it
makes pedestrians out of drivers by getting them to park up and walk
to multiple destinations, thereby rejuvinating public life in the streets
while patronizing pedestrian-friendly retail businesses and services.25

The design of a parking pricing strategy is directly related to formal

patterns in the material city. The different areas of shading in the
Uptown Plan diagram show the levels of cost for parking that correlate
with intensity of development, from the lowest to the highest (see
Figure 5.4). The most desirable and convenient locations are higher
priced and shorter time periods (e.g., on-street parking in the center of
Uptown), while slightly less convenient locations are lower priced and
for longer periods (e.g., a few blocks from the retail core in a shared
parking structure). We also designed a building type called the liner,
which is essentially a compact parking structure lined on the outside by
other uses, such as retail, office, or residential. The liner accommodates
the shared parking principle of the Park Once strategy while creating

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 Beyond Practice: Urbanism as Creative Political Act

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9 Parking Payment Machine Note: Numbers do ro t indude spaces in individual residential projects

Figure 5.4 Parking

F ig u re 5.4 P a rking strategy
s tra te g y diagram
d ia g ra m showing
s h o w in g both
b o th on-street
o n -s tre e t and
a n d off-street facilities,
o ff-s tre e t fa with
c ilitie s , w the
ith th e darker
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shaded
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to w a rd s th e center
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re p re s e n tin g higher-cost
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a n d more
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s h o rt-te rm
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n e a r the
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c o re , w ith the
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areas representing
re p re s e n tin g lower-cost
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a n d more
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long-term
lo n g -te rm parking. The
p a rk in g . T h e red
red dots
d o ts represent
re p re s e n t locations
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o f solar-powered
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p a rk in g .

Source; Moule
Source: M o u le &
& Polyzoides Architects
P o ly z o id e s A rc h ite c ts and
a n d Urbanists
U rb a n is ts

174
 Beyond Practice: Urbanism as Creative Political Act

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lin e r building
b u ild in g type
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p ro v id e th e strategic
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O nce structures
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S o u rc e ; Moule
Source: M o u le &
& Polyzoides Architects
P o ly z o id e s A rc h ite c ts and
a n d Urbanists
U rb a n is ts

an urban presence that is palatable and pedestrian-friendly in contrast

with the often cold and brutal designs of conventional concrete parking
garages (see Figure 5.5).

Outcomes in Uptown Whittier

Urban politics and transformation is not typically about a sudden

realization of a grand vision. The effectiveness of design projects
in urbanism relies more often than not on engaging the messy and
seemingly ordinary local politics and policy. The Whittier case study
offers insights into ubiquitous and critical aspects of urban form such
as parking systems and negotiation of local politics. While the case
study and many of its discussions may be specific to the American
context, the insights gained from the analysis are applicable to those
parts of the world that continue to cope with automobiles in myriad
ways. Despite the increasing investments in alternative modes of
transportation, the automobile continues to be a significant part of
urban life for the foreseeable future.

175
Beyond Practice: Urbanism as Creative Political Act

A task for transforming cities for the future is to develop a repertoire

of multiple design strategies and policy tools that are effective in
practicing urbanism as a creative political act. One advantage of
leveraging seemingly minor technical and regulatory issues such as
parking in Uptown Whittier is that such policy possesses automaticity,
which is the extent to which a tool utilizes an existing administrative
structure for its operations rather than creating its own special
administrative apparatus.26 Automaticity increases the likelihood of
implementation and its actual impact on the material city, since it
reduces the amount of new types of public management that are
necessary. The great advantage of automatic tools is that they make
it possible to enlist existing systems in the pursuit of new objectives.
Thus, one critical design strategy to achieve relatively spectacular
results is to utilize seemingly mundane policy tools.

While the Uptown Plan made significant progress towards creating a

political constituency for urbanism and leveraging parking to create
a humane urbanism, it fell short of many of its goals. Despite the best
efforts of the Moule & Polyzoides design team and me personally as
the project leader, the community stakeholders were not as active
as we had hoped. There were often serious disagreements among
the different groups and, when they did attend public meetings, the
conservative culture of Whittier ensured that community leaders were
not particularly vocal. Similarly, towards the end of the design process,
the Planning Commission and City Council wanted to have it both ways:
to create a more human-scaled and pedestrian-friendly environment
in Uptown Whittier while also catering to the perception that plenty
of visible parking is necessary for businesses to survive. Despite our
multiple explanations, illustrations, and protests, officials chose to
increase the amount of parking required for new retail and commercial
development.

Overall, however, the approach embodied in the Uptown Plan resulted

in its implementation even before it was fully designed, attracting
much attention and investment in the process and being recognized
with a prestigious award from the American Planning Association.
Furthermore, a critical question emerges from the Whittier analysis:
Is municipal budgeting crucial to the design process in urbanism? In
many cases, absolutely. Even though designers and urbanists are not

176
 Beyond Practice: Urbanism as Creative Political Act

conventionally trained to design municipal budgets, these budgets are

often the linchpins of urban projects. We were able to accomplish this
in Uptown Whittier because of the multidisciplinary nature of our team,
including a public economist who not only understood budgeting but
also had an extensive understanding of design due to his previous
collaborations with us. As we will see in the next case study from
Belo Horizonte, the budgeting process can even be designed to be
innovative such that it yields remarkable results.

Parque Da Terceira Água, Belo Horizonte

The case study analysis of the Parque Da Terceira Água, or Third Water
Park, describes a remarkable outcome of an explicitly political process,
participatory budgeting, pioneered as an exercise in democratic
decision-making by cities in Brazil. While this process certainly has its
flaws, what it nonetheless illustrates is that such creative political acts
can yield admirable results. The design of the Third Water Park is also
notable because it addresses serious problems in a creative manner.
The hilly area where the Park is located commonly faced landslides
and flooding during heavy rains, as well as environmental degradation
due to squatting and dirty water runoff from the homes of low-income
families. This case study connects the participatory budgeting process
with a material outcome, both of which are transformative, especially
since they occur within a favela, or informal settlement, which is one of
the poorest parts of the city of Belo Horizonte (see Figure 5.6). In order
to better understand the case study, it helps to first contextualize its
status within the informal sector.

Contextualizing Informality

The term “informal sector” was coined in 1971 by a British anthropologist,

Keith Hart, in a study of low-income activities among unskilled migrants
from Northern Ghana to the capital city, Accra, who could not find
wage employment.27 The informal economy consists of a wide range of
activities and workers in different parts of the world, including:

Street vendors in Mexico City; push-cart vendors in New York

city; rickshaw pullers in Calcutta; jitney drivers in Manila; garbage

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Beyond Practice: Urbanism as Creative Political Act

Figure 5.6 The vast majority of housing in informal settlements such as Bela Horizonte is built
informally; that is, usually without legal title to the land, without legal permission, and with self-help
construction techniques, as seen in this image.
Source: Aseem Inam

collectors in Bogotá; and roadside barbers in Durban. Those who

work on the streets or in the open air are the most visible informal
workers. Other informal workers are engaged in small shops and
workshops that repair bicycles and motorcycles; recycle scrap
metal; make furniture and metal parts; tan leather and stitch shoes;
weave, dye, and print cloth; polish diamonds and other gems;
make and embroider garments; sort and sell cloth, paper, and metal
waste; and more. The least visible informal workers, the majority
of them women, work from their homes. Home-based workers
are to be found around the world. They include: garment workers
in Toronto; embroiderers on the island of Madeira; shoemakers
in Madrid; and assemblers of electronic parts in Leeds. Other
categories of work that tend to be informal in both developed and
developing countries include: casual workers in restaurants and
hotels; subcontracted janitors and security guards; day labourers in
construction and agriculture; piece-rate workers in sweatshops; and
temporary office helpers or off-site data processors.28

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 Beyond Practice: Urbanism as Creative Political Act

A corollary to the informal economy is the informal settlement, also

known as the “slum” in many parts of the world. In fact, the

majority of slum dwellers in developing country cities earn their

living from informal sector activities located either within or
outside slum areas, and many informal sector entrepreneurs whose
operations are located within slums have clienteles extending
to the rest of the city. Most slum dwellers are in low-paying
occupations such as informal jobs in the garment industry,
recycling of solid waste, a variety of homebased enterprises and
many are domestic servants, security guards, piece rate workers
and self-employed hair dressers and furniture makers. The informal
sector is the dominant livelihood source in slums.29

How does one define a slum, or informal settlement? According to the

United Nations, an informal settlement is basically a “a contiguous
settlement where the inhabitants are characterized as having
inadequate housing and basic services … and is often not recognized
and addressed by the public authorities as an integral or equal part of
the city.”30 The informal aspect of an informal settlement arises from the
fact that landownership or leasing arrangements are often unofficial
or extra-legal: “A number of definitions consider lack of security of
tenure as a central characteristic of slums, and regard lack of any formal
document entitling the occupant to occupy the land or structure as
prima facie evidence of illegality and slum occupation.”31 Terms such
as slum, squatter settlement, shanty town, informal housing, and
low-income community are used somewhat interchangeably, but since
“slum” tends to have a pejorative and condescending connotation, I
prefer to use the more neutral term “informal settlement,” including in
this book.

Apart from a deeper understanding of the Belo Horizonte and Karachi

case studies in this chapter, what is the value of obtaining a better
grasp of the concept and reality of informal settlements? The author
Mike Davis, drawing from an exhaustive variety of sources, paints a
startling picture when he says that the

cities of the future, rather than being made out of glass and steel as
envisioned by earlier generations of urbanists, are instead largely

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Beyond Practice: Urbanism as Creative Political Act

constructed out of crude brick, straw, recycled plastic, cement

blocks, and scrap wood. Instead of cities of light soaring toward
heaven, much of the twenty-first century urban world squats in
squalor, surrounded by pollution, excrement, and decay.32

He supports this dramatic yet nonetheless sobering contention with

data which suggest that Karachi’s katchi abadi population doubles
every decade, Indian informal settlements grow 250 percent faster than
the overall population, an incredible 85 percent of Kenya’s population
growth between 1989 and 1999 was absorbed in the informal
settlements of Nairobi and Mombasa, and that Sao Paulo’s favelas
grew from about 1 percent of the total population in 1973 to around 20
percent in 1993, and increased throughout the 1990s at the rate of 16
percent per year.33 Informal settlements will continue to be a significant
aspect of cities and pose not only seemingly intractable challenges for
urbanists but also unique opportunities for urban transformation, as in
Belo Horizonte.

Project Overview

The Third Water Park is located deep inside the favela, or informal
settlement, known as Aglomerado da Serra in the city of Belo
Horizonte, Brazil, and is part of a larger informal settlement upgrading
program called Vila Viva. The private architecture firm, M3 Arquitetura
of Belo Horizonte, designed the master plan for the Park as well as
the strikingly elegant community center. Belo Horizonte is located in
southeast Brazil and is the country’s sixth largest city with a population
of 4.8 million people. There are three aspects of the larger Vila Viva
program and the specific Third Water Park project that move this
case study beyond the conventional definitions of professional urban
practice and into urbanism as a creative political act. The first – and
most important – aspect is that it emerged out of the municipal and
highly democratic participatory budgeting process that Brazil pioneered.
The second is a mode of intervention developed by the Belo Horizonte’s
bureaucrats, urbanists, and an ecologist to work directly with the
low-income communities in restoring the natural ecosystem of the
favela. The third aspect is a series of social and economic partnership
programs with nonprofit organizations and universities to create

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 Beyond Practice: Urbanism as Creative Political Act

educational, job training, and income generation programs. Overall,

the Park demonstrates the practice of urbanism as a creative political
act as a result of the network of larger political processes, including
the orçamento participativo (participatory budgeting), the Plano Global
Específico (Global Specific Plan), and the Vila Viva program (Living
Village program), which are interrelated and described in the following
sections.

Engaging the Political Process through Participatory Budgeting

The origins of the pioneering political process known as participatory

budgeting lie in a confluence of factors specific to the Brazilian city
of Porto Alegre in 1989: the strong neighborhood movement in the
city, the election of the Partido dos Trabalhadores, or Workers Party, to
executive power, the new legal infrastructure of participation that the
1988 Brazilian Constitution provided, and the claim for participation
that emerged in the first thirty days of the new mayor’s administration
(i.e., social movements raised claims for participation in the areas of
health, education, and housing).34 Participatory budgeting has been
highly significant and successful in three areas: broadening democratic
practices in Porto Alegre and later in other parts of Brazil, broadening
the access of the Brazilian poor to public goods, and renewing the
composition of the Brazilian political elite by helping create new leaders
who are less clientelistic, work more horizontally, and are formed by
political mobilization in their neighborhoods.35

Participatory budgeting in Brazil is essentially a process in which

hundreds of thousands of citizens meet in open public assemblies
to establish investment priorities for their individual regions (see
Figure 5.7). Named as a best practice in urbanism by the UN Habitat
II conference in 1996, participatory budgeting became the trademark
of Workers Party municipal administrations, and has been adopted by
most of its mayors ever since.36

The first step in the participatory budgeting process is a consultation

between government representatives and communities, presented in
general regional meetings regarding guidelines to the participatory
budgeting process and how funds were allocated in the previous

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Beyond Practice: Urbanism as Creative Political Act

Figure 5.7 A few of the thousands of ordinary citizens in Belo Horizonte participating in the participatory
budgeting process.
Source: Prefeitura Municipal de Belo Horizonte

budget.37 Participants then return to their neighborhoods for community

meetings and decide on priority projects to be proposed in a second
round of assemblies held at the subregional level. At these meetings
delegates for subregions are elected and projects proposed. Twenty-five
projects are selected for each region and city officials visit each of the
proposed projects to create a technical appraisal of viability. In the next

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 Beyond Practice: Urbanism as Creative Political Act

step, regional delegates tour the proposed projects in order to vote

on fourteen projects that will move forward in the process. Delegates
also vote for regional representatives to a resident council that works
with the municipality to create the final budget. These council members
follow the development of projects designated in the budget for the
following two years (see Figure 5.8).

In recent years, the City of Belo Horizonte has tried to harness

information technology to make the elaborate participatory budgeting

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and e now part of the 216 undertabngs in process from PB 94
' -«-n Eastern regional district • to 2007-2008 period (30th of October.
2008)
Map Base
a 1 undertaking concluded through the
PROOABEiyURBLE
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SUDECAP- UR81E 8 undertakings in process through the
Elaboration SMAPl/GEOP Digital PG
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Figure 5.8 A
F igure 5.8 A map
m a p of
o f the
th e of
o f nearly
n e a rly 1,200
1,200 participatory
p a rtic ip a to ry budgeting
b u d g e tin g projects
p ro je c ts spread
s p read out throughout
o u t th ro u g h o u t the
th e city
city
of
o f Belo
Belo Horizonte from
H o riz o n te fro m 1994
1994 to
to 2008,
2008, including
in c lu d in g in
in favelas
favela s such
such as
as Aglomerado
A g lo m e ra d o da
da Serra.
Serra.

Source; Prefeitura
Source: P re fe itu ra Municipal
M u n ic ip a l de
d e Belo
B e lo Horizonte
H o riz o n te

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Beyond Practice: Urbanism as Creative Political Act

process more inclusive. Starting in 2006, to guarantee the participation

of the population without access to the internet, the City Hall made
available to the voters over 150 venues including public and community
internet hubs, municipal internet centers, and municipal schools to
be used as public centers for voting. The voting process was further
broadened with citizens being able to also vote by phone through a
toll-free number.38

Plano Global Específico

Since 1998, the Plano Global Específico, or Global Specific Plan, has
become the prerequisite for the approval of interventions financed
through the participatory budgeting process. The Global Specific
Plan is a document that maps and collects data from the informal
settlements that wish to be considered by the participatory budgeting
process for allocating resources and helps identify the needs and
establish priorities for each settlement. For example, the Global
Specific Plan has served as an instrument for identifying priority
areas with higher concentrations of poverty and social vulnerability
in Belo Horizonte, and helps shape the municipal government’s
social programs. A key mapping tool in the Global Specific Plan that
contributes to participatory budgeting is GIS, or geographic information
systems. Through geo-referenced data, it is possible to process all
the information with regard to the participatory budgeting process,
including maps that inform municipal governments about the current
status of issues identified through participatory budgeting categorized
by theme (e.g., favela improvements, infrastructure, health, education),
and by geographical scale (e.g., region, neighborhood, street).

The elaboration of a Global Specific Plan is the work of an

interdisciplinary team of no less than a dozen professionals including
engineers, architects, sociologists, health workers, economists, and
social workers.39 The process involves innumerable meetings with
community leaders and several assemblies to which the whole
population of the area is invited in order to make sure that every
problem is addressed and the priorities are set properly. The process
usually takes a few years from approval to completion. Through this
process, it was also the first time in history that providing low-income

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housing in the poorest parts of the city of Belo Horizonte became

one of the priorities of the municipal government. In the Aglomerado
da Serra favela (where the Third Water Park is located) some of the
needs that were detected by the Global Specific Plan concerned a lack
of basic infrastructure, environmental degradation (i.e., one of the
prime motives behind the creation of the Park), lack of access to public
transportation and education.

The Global Specific Plan is also considered to be the backbone of Vila

Viva, or Living Village, a significant initiative of URBEL (Companhia
Urbanizadora e de Habitação de Belo Horizonte, or Housing and
Urbanization Company of Belo Horizonte), which was created in 1961
to manage city-owned land and, since 1993, it has become responsible
for executing the city housing policy and managing interventions in
the favelas.40 Since the Global Specific Plan outlines recommendations
for priority interventions, it allows for a more streamlined process to
favela upgrading improvements and for URBEL (henceforth referred to
as the Urbanization Company) to capitalize on resources of the Brazilian
federal government.

Vila Viva program

A number of characteristics make the Vila Viva program particularly

remarkable. Vila Viva is the largest, most comprehensive, and longest
running favela upgrading initiative in Brazil.41 The program tries to be
fairly comprehensive by pursuing three general goals: legalization
and titling of land, upgrading of infrastructure and basic services,
and socio-economic development. As the federal government began
creating programs and setting aside funds for favela upgrading and
infrastructure projects, the City’s Vila Viva program was able to rapidly
transition from a paper-based to a field-based program because of
the production of diagnostics in the form of Global Specific Plans,
as described in the previous section. The introduction of diagnostics
through these Plans also drastically changed the way favelas are treated
in Belo Horizonte: they are now recognized as being integral parts of
the city instead of being considered as invisible.

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The Vila Viva program employs consultants and contractors to conduct

the diagnostics along the lines of its three general goals, mentioned
earlier. The program also emphasizes community participation during
the diagnosis of the Global Specific Plan, but because the work is
contracted out to private professionals the amount of actual community
participation varies between favelas. While some consultants have
hired community members to help create the documents, others have
ensured community participation through community meetings and
reference groups to evaluate results rather than create the diagnosis.
The subsequent interventions and projects tend to be government-
initiated through a need-based ranking system of identified problem
areas, available resources, and various political issues.42 Project
management for these interventions is conducted by three entities:
private engineering companies contracted by the municipal government
to carry out actual implementation, social and technical consultants,
and, to oversee finances, representatives from the Caixa Econômica
Federal (Federal Savings Bank), the largest government-owned financial
institution in Latin America.43

Once the government-initiated interventions begin, Vila Viva

implements on-site social programming throughout the projects’ entire
process in order to better communicate with the residents and offer full
support for families directly affected by the projects.44 As is the case
of the Third Water Park, projects may be situated in densely populated
areas where surrounding residents continue to live and work while
construction is taking place.45 Residents living in high-risk areas such
as on steep slopes or who are directly impacted from construction
activity are resettled through Vila Viva’s Programa de Remoção e
Ressentamento (Removal and Resettlement Program). Selected
residents are informed and provided with individual consultation about
their alternatives, with the Program being responsible for the relocation
of removed families to temporary as well as permanent shelter.

Redesigning the Favela/Designing the Park

Aglomerado da Serra is the largest and oldest favela in Belo Horizonte;

for this reason it was the first to be chosen for upgrading intervention
by Vila Viva.46 Aglomerado da Serra is in fact a conglomeration

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(aglomerado in Portuguese) of six informal settlements with an official

population of about 46,000 representing over 13,000 households, with
unofficial estimates that run to as much as double that number. The
Urbanization Company chose to focus on upgrading the infrastructure
in selected areas throughout Algomerado da Serra in order to improve
overall road connectivity and address growing sewage problems. Since
Vila Viva’s commencement in Serra in 2004, four principal interventions
have taken place: the construction of new low-income apartments
for those displaced by the other three projects, the widening of the
main arterial road, Avenida do Cardoso, widening narrow lanes and
alley-ways, and the construction of ecological park and recreational
activity areas, including the First, Second, and Third Water Parks (see
Figure 5.9). About 80 percent of the 1,400 workers for the construction
of these projects were recruited inside the favela, and by 2012 the total
cost of the Vila Viva project in Aglomerado da Serra was 218 reals ($110
million), with approximately 30 percent coming from the municipality
and the remaining 70 percent from the federal government.47

As with other favelas in Brazil, Aglomerado da Serra is built on steep

hills that suffer from flooding from heavy rains as well as landslides
that destroy the houses built on those hills. Furthermore, existing
springs and streams run down the steep slopes that cut through the
region, qualifying some areas as dangerous and inhabitable due to
the attendant geological risks.48 Another major problem diagnosed
was environmental pollution and degradation, which includes informal
structures and houses on steep hillsides, deforestation, accumulation
of garbage, and the dumping of sewage into the streams and rivers
that ultimately feed into the water supply system of the city.49 Such
water contamination causes diseases and increases the level of child
mortality while compromising the basic sanitation of the city through
contamination of its larger watersheds. The introduction of the three
Water Parks (so called due to their designs incorporating streams,
springs, and rainwater runoff) emerged as a solution to all these
problems in a way that was extremely creative as well as ecologically
sensitive. With high residential densities of above 740 inhabitants per
acre (300 per hectare), there is no question that green open space is
also a welcome respite for the inhabitants of Aglomerado da Serra (see
Figure 5.10).50

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Figure 5.9 A view of Alomerado da Serra with the existing informal housing in the background, the
widened main arterial road, Avenida do Cardoso, in the middle, and the new ecological parks to the
right of the road and on the lower left, the edge of the Third Water Park.
Source: Aseem Inam

For the implementation of these ecological parks and recreational areas,

about 1,000 families in the most vulnerable houses were removed,
resettled, or compensated such that ecological landscapes of native
vegetation could be grown and cultivated.51 The cultivation process
involved working with children and teaching them gardening skills they
previously did not possess. The streams running through the parks
were cleaned, although there continues to be some dumping of waste
by residents. Carlos Teixeira, one of the designers of the Third Water
Park, describes these interventions thus:

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Figure 5.10 Two boys stop by the stream in the Third Water Park to clean their bicycles.
Source: Aseem Inam

There was also a nice project created by the biologist [Bacho

Gibram] that was leading the team for the municipal department
of social assistance on planting donated saplings. The nursery
garden was located by the stream’s edges, and everything was
well-integrated. The community had classes on how to plant those
saplings on the small public areas of the informal settlement.52

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When I visited the Third Water Park in 2012, I found it to be lush with
plantings and trees, with the relatively clean stream running through
it. The size and density of its vegetation contributes to its marked
presence within the Aglomerado da Serra, which is unusual for an
informal settlement (see Figure 5.11). Unfortunately, due to budget
cuts, the community-based tree-planting classes had been suspended
and, owing to fears of land invasion and squatting in the Park, the
Urbanization Company had enclosed it with a tall fence with extremely
limited entry points. Even though the municipal government does
try to involve the community as much as possible – especially in
the participatory budgeting process – there is still a fundamental
bureaucratic distrust of residents. The challenge is to further improve
participatory processes of community empowerment that disrupt
past patterns of land invasions while creating new opportunities for
neighborhood self-governance.

Figure 5.11 A view from the Third Water Park towards the rest of the Aglomerado da Serra shows the
rare site of a large area of lush vegetation inside a densely populated informal settlement.
Source: Aseem Inam

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There are several community facilities constructed in and around the

Third Water Park, the most striking of which is a community center
known as Centro Comunitário BH Cidadania, which is truly a jewel
of a building with its contemporary elegance (see Figure 5.12). The
Community Center houses professional and environmental education
programs, a collective kitchen, gym, nursery, playroom, digital center,
and workshops for carpentry and printing. Due to a low budget, the
concept of the building is simple: blocks of activities separated by
courtyards and passageways covered by a green perforated metal
casing. The building has an open and accessible presence, and works
well with the existing landscape of banana plants, and mango and

Figure 5.12 A view of the community center, Centro Comunitário BH Cidadania, designed by the firm
M3 Arquitetura as a part of the master plan for the Third Water Park.
Source: Aseem Inam

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guava trees. The green metal roof has several openings over the plants
and trees as well as skylights, thus ensuring natural ventilation and
light throughout the building. Close to the Community Center building,
there is a fitness area painted in yellow for residents to exercise;
unfortunately, it had been vandalized when I visited it. Still, the Park
and the Community Center, both designed by private architecture firm
M3 Arquitetura, illustrate how a political process such as participatory
budgeting can yield excellent design outcomes in the material city.

Designing Process and Product

The City of Belo Horizonte has been using a participatory budgeting

model since 1994, and so it can claim to have accomplished nearly
1,200 public works projects while mobilizing over 370,000 residents
directly and close to 340 million reals ($170 million) in financial
resources through this process.53 These are indeed impressive numbers,
as are the resulting investments, including schools, health centers,
cultural centers, parks and recreation areas, low-income housing, and
infrastructure projects that have brought urban development to many
of the city’s regions, especially favelas and peripheral neighborhoods.
The participatory budgeting process is transformative because it has
led to significantly increased investment in low-income neighborhoods,
improved the provision of municipal services, and, most of all,
opened a political space that diffuses political power to marginalized
populations.54 However, participatory budgeting continues to face
challenges in addressing the deeply historical inequalities of Brazilian
cities. In Belo Horizonte, only 50 percent of the municipal budget is
allocated every two years, which does not maximize the full potential
of leveraging public financing. There continue to be certain groups who
remain outside the process such as the middle class and the sub-poor,
and there is persistent concern about the potential for manipulation
within the participatory budgeting process.55

The participatory budgeting and Parque Da Terceira Água case study

illustrates the vital relationship between political process and design
of place. The key moment in the case study is the design of the
participatory budgeting process by the municipal government of Belo
Horizonte, which is commendable as an initiative. The challenge is to

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recognize and navigate the contradiction between ongoing process

and finished product. A critical point in this respect is that the Global
Specific Plan method follows the conventional planning sequence of
data gathering, diagnosis, and proposal, which could become more
responsive and adaptive to the changing needs of the residents of
Aglomerado da Serra by following the principles and strategies of
the city as flux, discussed in Chapter 3. Ultimately, though, the critical
insight from the case study, as well as the next one of the Orangi Pilot
Project, is that there are multiple ways in which the processes of design
and urbanism can further deepen democracy.

Orangi Pilot Project, Karachi

The Orangi Pilot Project is the one case study in this book with arguably
the greatest impact on people’s lives, and illustrates the conceptual
shift towards urbanism as a creative political act in an unexpected
manner. The Orangi Pilot Project (henceforth referred to as the Orangi
Project) began in Karachi, Pakistan as a remarkable low-cost sanitation
and sewage system project in an informal settlement and that has
now benefitted more than two million urban residents in Orangi and
beyond. What is unexpected is that an apparently straightforward
and technical infrastructure design project is actually a project of
radical social transformation, in which an extremely low-income and
disenfranchised community has been empowered through mobilization
and a combination of self-help and partnerships strategies. While this
was accomplished by incrementally mobilizing the community around
a felt need (i.e., lack of sanitation) and a technical solution (i.e., low-cost
sewage disposal), the larger political, social, cultural, and economic
context of Karachi is absolutely crucial to understanding its remarkable
impact.

Contextualizing Transformation

In Pakistan, large settlements of housing for the poor are a significant

aspect of urban life. These settlements are called katchi abadis, which
are informal settlements created through squatting or informal
subdivisions of government or private land.56 In Karachi, a port city

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and commercial center of Pakistan, an estimated 60 percent of the

total population of fifteen million live in these katchi abadis.57 Here
land is purchased from a middleman who subdivides government and
private land and sells it to the poor, while paying bribes of cash and
choice plots to government officials. While not all the residents of these
settlements are desperately poor, most of them do lack basic sanitation
and housing infrastructure. In addition, these settlements are often not
socially organized, for example, to mobilize towards making education
available to all residents. One resident of Orangi describes these
settlements as consisting of people “who understand their problems,
are able to define them and react to them accordingly” but are also
“waiting for somebody such as the government to help them.”58 The
Orangi Project focused specifically on Orangi township, which is the
largest informal settlement in Karachi, expanding over 10,000 acres
(4,160 hectares) with a population of about two million people.59 The
first settlement in Orangi began in 1965 and over time the township
gained a prominent position as a center of informal economic activities
for the city.

The context of Orangi Town is particularly problematic, with extreme

violence, poverty, and gender inequality presenting challenges for
organizing the community and implementing various projects. Since
the mid-1980s Karachi has been known as one of the most violent
megacities in the world, with more than 1,700 murders in 2011 and a
high level of organized crime and politically motivated killings with a
“porous boundary between criminal groups and mainstream political
parties.”60 In addition to a long history of everyday violence, both
Orangi and Karachi are rife with poverty, with the average daily wage
for residents of Karachi being 44 rupees, or about US$3 per day in the
early years of the Orangi Project.61 Severe gender inequality is also a
common feature of Karachi. When the Orangi Project was in its early
stages, only 49 percent of females were literate compared with 70
percent of males in Karachi, while in poorer areas like Orangi township,
female literacy rates were as low as 34 percent.62 This potentially
ruinous mix of violence, poverty, and gender inequality in Orangi and
Karachi created a set of dangerous constraints for the Orangi Project’s
founders – yet they persevered.

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Designing Collaborative Low-Cost Sanitation

The Orangi Project began work as a non-governmental organization in

1980, when the residents of Orangi did not qualify for any government
aid due to their informal or unofficial status. Dr. Akhtar Hameed Khan
was the founder and first director of the Project, which was designed
specifically to work collaboratively with people living in informal
settlements, especially the poor. More than two million people have
since benefitted from the Orangi Project, which is a striking number for
a grassroots, low-cost effort built incrementally over the years.63

When the Orangi Project began in 1980, conditions in the area were
quite dire (see Figure 5.1), with the lanes and alleys of Orangi

running with waste water and sewage, and infant mortality was 128
in 1,000. The conditions stymied development: school attendance
was down and trade difficult to establish. The psychological effects,
too, were severe, sapping the will for change. The lanes couldn’t
be used as public space and quarrels over sanitation issues were
frequent. The wastewater also damaged house foundations and
triggered unhealthy rising damp.64

Figure 5.13 Orangi township was filled with open drains and sewage, with children having to wade
through the refuse on a daily basis, as seen in this image.
Source: Balazs Gardi

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In the beginning, one of the greatest challenges was addressing

the mistaken belief that people in katchi abadis would be supplied

with sewerage and sanitation without charge by the government
… When Dr. Khan asked people in the community, it was clear that
they wanted a conventional sewerage system, but it was also clear
that they were unwilling to pay for it – they wanted Dr. Khan to
persuade the Karachi Development Authority to provide it free, as
[they thought] it did … to the richer areas of the city … When it was
clear that this would never happen, Dr. Khan set to work with the
community to find alternatives. He would later describe this first
step as the most important thing he did in Orangi – liberating, as
he put it, the people from the immobilizing myths of government
promises.65

Thus, the low-cost sanitation program began by addressing four

main barriers constraining the community: psychological barriers
that required convincing communities to think of the streets and the
neighborhood along with their houses, social barriers that called
for communities to come together, economic barriers that required
reducing costs, and technical barriers that required building capacity
within the communities.66

A second myth the Orangi Project helped dispel in the 1980s was that
the residents of informal settlements were unable or unwilling to pay
for basic services such as clean water or adequate sanitation. The reality
was that “people living in Orangi were not destitute. They were poor,
but they had built their houses on their own savings. Their houses
represented an average investment of 20,000–25,000 rupees ($800–
$1,000), and the desire to improve them was a powerful motivation for
constructing sanitary lines and underground sewage.”67 In the Orangi
Project, costs were only one-eighth of the conventional sewage service
provided by the city authorities due to changes in technical design and
the elimination of payoffs to intermediaries. One example of cheaper
technology is the building of sewage systems with pipes that are
cheaper, shorter, and buried more shallowly than the main city sewage
system pipes.

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Combined with tapping into the residents’ abilities and willingness to

pay was perhaps the greater challenge of organizing the communities
for collective action in ways that had never been witnessed in Orangi.
Community organizing began by

creating work units consisting of the families living in one lane.

People were taught to develop a sense of responsibility for the
lanes, to treat them as an extension of their own homes. Lane
managers went from house to house collecting funds for pipe
laying, for sanitation and for water projects and helping to arbitrate
in disputes. A month’s salary – about $25 – was enough to provide
basic infrastructure for each family.68

An essential part of this strategy was to recruit social organizers from

the communities in order to mitigate issues of time, language, culture,
and rapport with the residents. Hand in hand with that is a parallel
strategy to identify and work with those residents who are more keenly
aware of local problems, think about them, try to solve them, and are
willing to engage in dialogue.

Undertaking this project was financially feasible largely because 50

percent of financing, management, and maintenance is done by the
communities themselves in the construction of toilets, lane sewers, and
small secondary sewers, and the other 50 percent, where possible, is
done by the government through support for finance, the management
and maintenance of large secondary sewers, main sewers, and
treatment plants.69 In this manner, by 2010 the low-cost sanitation
program had extended gradually to cover over 100,000 houses in
virtually all of Orangi township, with residents having invested 115
million rupees ($1.2 million) in toilets and sewage disposal systems
within the townships, the government investing 340 million rupees
($3.5 million) in main sewage disposal pipes and systems, as well as
other settlements in Karachi and other towns and villages in Sindh and
Punjab provinces, covering a total population of more than two million,
including one million in Orangi township itself (see Figure 5.14).70
Through this process, the Orangi Pilot Project Research and Training
Institute continues to provide social and technical guidance to both
communities and the government, while also facilitating partnerships.

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r e f e r e n c e s NALA DEVELOPMENT
^^^^■Completed as box trunk
» Sewerage Line ™***ln Progress
» Drain ^^^“ "Branch Nala
- Main Nala
0 North *—»PC-1completed-under
process for approval

Figure
F igure 5.14 A survey
5.14 A s u rv e y map
m a p from
fro m 2006
2006 showing
s h o w in g the
th e extensive
e x te n s iv e network
n e tw o rk of
o f 6,000
6,000 low-cost
lo w -c o s t sewage
sew age lines
lines
constructed
c o n s tru c te d lane-by-lane
la ne-by-lane and
a n d connecting
c o n n e c tin g around
a ro u n d 100,000
100,000 houses
hou ses in
in Orangi.
O rangi.

S o u rc e ; Orangi
Source: O ra n g i Pilot
P ilo t Project
P ro je c t Research
R esearch and
a n d Training
T ra in in g Institute
In s titu te

Already by the end of the 1980s, Orangi township had been radically
transformed with the help of the Project: open sewers had largely
vanished, reducing health and physical hazards for the residents;
mobility had improved within the community for both human traffic
commodities and human traffic; rates of infant mortality had fallen
significantly, and clean space in front of houses and lanes provided
recreational and social areas (see Figure 5.15). The basic approach

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was for the non-governmental organization, the Orangi Research and

Training Institute, to act as a researcher and facilitator rather than as a
financier or developer. The first core principle for engagement has been
to establish links with communities.71 This approach has been a huge
success and was expanded to four autonomous groups in 1988, each
with its own board of directors:

• Orangi Pilot Project Society, to control funding for the other

three groups.

• Orangi Pilot Project Research and Training Institute, to manage

the program and provide training for onward dissemination.

• Orangi Charitable Trust, to manage micro-credit programs.

Figure 5.15 Side-by-side images of the same lane with the sewages pipes being installed on the left,
and the finished lane that is clean, dry and free of waste water, on the right.
Source: Orangi Pilot Project Research and Training Institute

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• Karachi Health and Social Development Association, to manage

a health program.

Orangi residents also face the challenge of inadequate and poor-quality

housing. The formal sector does not meet housing demand in Pakistan’s
cities because it supplies only about 120,000 housing units per year
while the demand is for 350,000 units annually. This gap between
housing supply and demand is accommodated largely through self-help
construction in urban katchi abadis where an estimated nine million
people live throughout Pakistan.72 Community surveys showed that
houses in Orangi had to contend with several issues: substandard
concrete blocks, faulty construction techniques, poor ventilation, and
weak roofing and housing structures.

In response, and building upon the effectiveness of the low-cost

sanitation program, the low-cost housing program was launched in 1986.
The housing program enables improvement in building components and
construction techniques that benefits more than 2,500 homes in Orangi
each year through provision of financial credit, technical guidance for
building components, construction material manufacturing yards,
training of youth masons, and the collective mobilization of house
owners.73 The housing program also includes improved concrete blocks
and alternative roofing components (e.g., experiments on ferrocement
roofing channels, precast batten tile and tier girder tile roofing),
standardized steel shuttering for concrete construction, technical
manuals and instruction sheets, audiovisual aids for instruction, and the
construction of demonstration model units of housing.74

The education program began when the Orangi Research Institute’s

collaborative work in the neighborhoods of Orangi exposed them to
educated youth who wanted to help further educate their communities
but lacked the financial and technical capacity to do so. Moreover, even
though government schools do exist and are free of charge, people
often prefer private schools for the better quality of education they
provide. In response, the Orangi Project’s support to education is
primarily in the form of small grants to entrepreneurs to start up
training programs and schools. With the success of small schools,
teacher training and school savings groups were initiated that serve
as a further resource pool for the schools. Many private schools

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have also been established with the assistance of non-governmental

organizations that charge a fee per student.75 The Project has also been
responsible for upgrading some small schools.

By 2010, the education program had resulted in more than 700 schools
educating around 140,000 children. In addition, the Orangi Charitable
Trust has supported 150 more schools with credit.76 Like the sanitation
program, there is also a critical community organizing aspect to the
education program. Lectures and forums have been organized for
strengthening the coming together of schools and linking up their
training activities. The events, besides adding to their skills, provide
an opportunity for schools and teachers to come together. In order to
strengthen the self-help process of support, groups of between twenty
and thirty school owners are mobilized to come together as savings
groups. As a result of all these efforts, literacy “rates … are now among
the highest in Pakistan. Socially and economically, Orangi is much more
connected to the rest of Karachi in diverse ways. Many [residents] are
white-collar workers; a substantial minority are professionals, women
and entrepreneurs in the work sector industry.”77

One of the direct benefits of transforming the existing open and filthy
drains and pools of stagnant drainage water through the low-cost
sanitation program has been an improvement in the health of Orangi’s
residents. On top of that the Orangi Project, through its subsidiary the
Karachi Health and Development Association, has begun a separate
health program that supports local Orangi clinics set up by the people
by supplying vaccines, family planning components, and training
vaccinators and traditional birth attendants. As a result, over 750 small
health clinics, over 200 providers of vaccinations, and over 550 traditional
birth attendants (e.g., midwives) have been supported.78 Health indicators
improved as early as 1993, when infant mortality had fallen dramatically,
from 128 deaths among 1,000 births to thirty-seven in 1,000.79

Micro-credit is the extension of very small loans (micro-loans)

to impoverished borrowers who typically lack collateral, steady
employment, and a verifiable credit history, which is a common
problem in informal settlements such as Orangi. Micro-credit programs
support entrepreneurship and alleviate poverty, but may also be utilized
to empower women and uplift groups and communities. The Orangi

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Project established the Orangi Charitable Trust as an independent

institution in 1987 to support residents’ efforts towards wealth creation.
The Trust’s approach was based on two significant findings: (1) the
productive labor force and informal economy in Orangi and its
intertwined relationship with the formal city, and (2) lack of access to
formal credit to business entrepreneurs.

The resultant Micro Enterprise Credit program supports small

family businesses, set up by people in their homes, with credit (see
Figure 5.16). The program has also been extended to provide credit
for livestock and agriculture-related work in villages in addition to
other kinds of work. The program has been extremely successful, with
expansion through over forty partner non-governmental organizations
in over thirty cities and towns and nearly 1,000 villages, mostly in
the Sindh and Punjab provinces of Pakistan. So far, the program has
supported 140,000 small enterprise units with credit of 1.68 billion
rupees ($17 million), with an impressive 97 percent loan recovery rate.
The program works through partnerships to support similar initiatives
and even influence government policy.80 The role of women has been
especially significant, including women’s livestock cooperative farming
with the aim to increase the income, social status, and empowerment
of rural women who have experience of goat rearing by providing
financial assistance and technical support.81

In a context that is rife with gender inequality and discrimination,

women’s empowerment has been a particular feature – rather than
a separate program – of many of the Orangi Project’s programs. For
example, in terms of education, the Project’s founder Akhtar Hameed
Khan believed that one of the keys to enhancing gender equality was
promoting female teachers in schools where boys and girls are taught
together. Increasing the number of female teachers makes parents more
comfortable sending their daughters to school and creates a virtuous
circle of more educated girls, more female teachers, more schools,
and higher female literacy.82 Another example is in wealth creation.
In the 1980s, many women in Orangi earned very small amounts of
money doing simple stitching on their sewing machines for clothing
contractors. The Orangi Project identified these female stitchers as one
of the poorest and most distressed groups, and worked with them to
set up a cooperative that assumed the contractors’ functions without

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Figure 5.16 With funds from the Orangi Micro Enterprise Credit program, this woman was able to begin
a business making and selling incense sticks.
Source: Zofeen Ebrahim/IPS

the contractors’ profit: to procure orders from exporters, to distribute

the work, to ensure punctuality, to make delivery to exporters, and
to collect payment for wages. The Project also established work
centers with simple sewing machines as well as industrial machines,
and arranged for the training of workers and organized managers
from among the stitchers. It obtained donations for equipment for
the centers and for machines to be distributed to stitchers who were
particularly poor and needy.83

Overall, the Orangi Project continues to strengthen the role of women

in a society where women are not known to have played prominent

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leadership roles at the local level. Women are often elected as group
leaders who mobilize their families and communities as well as
raise the necessary funds for the development of sewers out of the
household budget. The Orangi Charitable Trust mobilized three groups
of nearly ninety women as part of mobilizing women’s savings groups
for the health and education of children, while the Research and
Training Institute’s Cooperative Housing Saving and Loan program
has also mobilized women’s groups.84 As Perween Rahman, the former
director of the Orangi Pilot Project explained to a journalist, women
play a crucial role in Orangi especially at the household level because a
woman:

is in charge of the entire house, [the] entire budget. And if she’s

not convinced, no money can be let out for the development. No
house can be improved, no child can go and get educated. It’s a
woman who [makes] the decision. But when you go into some
house, a man will come and talk and be very upfront and high
profile, because by nature, the women have been very gentle but
persuasive. They know how to persuade their men … to do the
things that they want to get done.85

Understanding and working with this set of social dynamics has been
crucial to the enormous impact of the Orangi Project.

Orangi Pilot Project’s Creative Political Acts

The extraordinary success of the Orangi Pilot Project is due to its

unique philosophy of the practice of urbanism as a creative political
act characterized by low-key technically oriented non-partisan actions.
Within the context of Karachi’s extremes of violence, gender inequality,
and poverty, such a practice enables it to be focused on the issues
at hand, steadfast through the many political vagaries of Pakistan,
and to develop strategic partnerships with both non-governmental
organizations and government agencies (see Figure 5.17). Still, this
form of practice has its share of critics. For example, during the riots
in Karachi of 1985 to 1986, when thousands of lives were lost and a
curfew imposed on Orangi for days, the Orangi Project’s response was
to provide its office as a meeting place for community leaders and help

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 Beyond Practice: Urbanism as Creative Political Act

Figure 5.17 The Orangi Pilot project’s ability to generate unprecedented mobilization of local
neighborhoods and strategic partnerships with organizations points to the power of practicing urbanism
as a creative political act.
Source: Orangi Pilot Project Research and Training Institute

communities rebuild their infrastructure. The more recent 2010 Karachi

riots and curfew saw a similar response from the Project. Critics claim
that the Orangi Project should do much more by using its influence to
mitigate the violence.86

The Orangi Project made the extremely difficult moral choice to work
among the most extreme urban conditions, and its founder, Akhtar
Hameed Khan, faced multiple death threats for this work. However,
today, because of the Project’s deep commitment to Orangi, the
Project faces the “the risk of assuming the de facto responsibilities
of all problems that arise in the community … As it stands, everyone
assumes that since the Orangi Pilot Project has developed the
[initiative], it is responsible for all problems associated with it.”87 Those
leading the Project, on the other hand, have a very different view of the
process, one that is based entirely on the perspective of the residents
and a model based on collaborative partnership:

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What is needed is an understanding of the people and the

community [as a whole]. For example, the extent of the problems,
how people perceive the problems, what possible solutions/method
have they tried or would suggest. This can be identified through
dialogue, discussions with the community and observations.
This interaction in itself starts a process of mutual understanding
between the support organization and the community.88

Such a model of partnerships involves neighborhood management

of local residents who do most of the construction labor, a
non-governmental organization that provides appropriate technology
and helps organize the neighborhood residents, government agencies
that have built major drains and treatment plants to handle the sewage,
and international donor agencies who provide financial resources to
expand the initial successful pilot program. The resulting partnerships
have produced radical change in the local sanitation system – and
housing, education, health, and financial systems – that could not have
been produced by any one of them working alone.

Revolutionizing Urbanism

As the preceding case studies illustrate, to practice urbanism as a

creative political act can be revolutionary. Such practice requires the
willingness to subvert the present culture and practice of design. This
involves critically challenging the traditions of conventional urbanism as
embodied in fields such as architecture, landscape architecture, urban
design, city planning, and civil engineering, and to reinvent pieces of
these traditions in a way that remakes reality. In fact, revolution

involves temporary anarchy. It releases the bonds on man’s [sic]

past collective behavior and is his most potentially creative political
act. It therefore involves man’s most deeply held ideals, morals,
norms, ethics, and principles and tests his competing theories
about human nature, religious belief, social justice, and historical
process.89

It is not beyond the scope of urbanists to imaginatively and creatively

engage with the political reality of the city to create alternative

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processes for designing and building cities. Moreover, the “source of

these new alternatives is the human imagination. It is the ability to
come up with new ideas, rather than the ability to get in touch with
unchanging essences that is the engine of moral progress.”90

The critical nature of urbanism is that it is part of a social, political,

and economic regime which can also question that very regime. If
there is one single distinguishing characteristic of the urban regimes,
it is that of power. Who has the power to shape cities, and how is that
power wielded? Democracy may be about clash and conflict between
different stakeholders, but power is often wielded in less obvious
ways. In the Uptown Whittier case study, the most powerful person in
local government was the City Manager, who was used to privately
negotiate with developers while we were publicly redesigning the
historic retail core of the city. Power is also expressed in the material
city via the production and control of public space. Public space is
the spatial expression of politics that is open to contestation, and is
ordered through negotiation and deal-making. The making of the public
realm should be through many voices because unlike private space,
which is the space of retreat, public space is the space of interaction.
As described in Chapter 1, the broader concept of the public realm
includes not only formal public spaces (e.g., streets, sidewalks, squares,
parks), but also the processes by which those spaces come about – as
is the case with the Whittier, Belo Horizonte, and Karachi examples. In
all three cases, urbanists undertook the challenging task of designing
decision-making processes that were not only transparent and
participatory, but also helped disperse power to communities.

Finally, what the three case studies in this chapter illustrate is that
politics refers to not only the large-scale governments and political
systems that are meant to organize society, but also and equally
importantly, the local politics in which we all engage, the complex web
of relationships from which individuals and groups seek to exert power
and influence in daily life. Urbanists can specifically engage with the
local context of significant places, which means paying attention to
the particular nature of relationships and histories that exist in different
communities. In the Uptown Plan, it was the deeply entrenched
automobile culture and the hierarchical nature of political decision-
making in Whittier that had to be acknowledged and challenged. In the

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Third Water Park, it was the years of dictatorship at the national level
in Brazil and the decades-long marginalization of informal settlements
that were substantially shifted through participatory budgeting and
the Vila Viva program in Belo Horizonte. The Orangi Project faced the
monumental task of working within the poverty, violence, and gender
discrimination of Karachi to enable community empowerment through
a seemingly innocuous and technically impressive infrastructure design
project. In these and other ways, the specific politics of each context
matters a great deal for making often difficult moral choices and
ultimately, for urban transformation.

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6
Transformations: Urbanism
as Transformation
As I have argued throughout this book, designing urban transformation
involves both fundamental conceptual shifts and radically innovative
forms of practice. To fulfill the potential of the question, “What can
urbanism be?” requires that the synthesizing propositive thinking of
the creative fields be integrated with the critical inquiry of the social
sciences as well as the long-term historical understanding of cities.
In this manner, urbanism can be transformative when it is a both/and
proposition rather than an either/or division, whether it is with different
disciplines and fields or with theory and practice. Pragmatists like
Richard Rorty understand that:

there is no sharp break between natural science and social science,

nor between social science and politics, philosophy and literature.
All areas of culture are part of the same endeavor to make life
better. There is no deep split between theory and practice, because
from a Pragmatist view all so-called “theory” which is not wordplay
is always already practice.1

Similarly, for John Dewey,

knowing and doing are indivisible aspects of the same process,

which is the business of adaptation. We learn in the progressivist

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phases by doing: we take a piece of acquired knowledge into a

concrete situation, and the results we get constitute a new piece of
knowledge which we carry over into our next encounter with our
environment.2

Furthermore, these discussions of Pragmatism and the accompanying

case studies illustrate how we can learn to judge existing urbanist
projects in ways that more accurately capture the multifaceted
complexity of cities. For example, to judge the true quality of an urban
initiative, one has to observe its performance over time as part of a
changing city. Projects such as Frank Gehry’s renowned Guggenheim
Museum in Bilbao or the eco-cities of China tend to be presented as
iconic images rather than as a multidimensional perspective of living
projects that have to grapple with hard-core social and economic
realities. At the other end of this spectrum, we can understand informal
settlements as possessing significant problems but also as sources of
great innovation, resourcefulness, and low-impact living. We can learn
to judge excellence in urbanism through the nature of encounters
between projects and their publics over several decades, and by more
critically examining the values we uphold in our conceptions of what
a city is and what a city should be. Such shifts in judgments about
existing urbanisms contribute significantly towards designing urban
transformation.

We can cultivate a transformative approach to urbanism by developing

design strategies that are more provisional and open-ended, including
the teaching of design studios without predetermined outcomes. For
example, an urbanism studio focusing on revitalizing a depressed
neighborhood may decide that the best solution is not a master plan;
rather the solution may be to design a job training and community
empowerment program. A studio that I conducted in the city of Detroit
led to an actual event celebrating hip-hop culture, including the
painting of graffiti art as murals, the reappropriation of public space,
and the social construction of collective identity through multiple
events. The real legacy of this design studio was a group of teenage
youth who took responsibility for the future of their neighborhood
(e.g., by organizing the festival, raising funds, mobilizing residents,
painting murals, working with the police) and community groups
that subsequently integrated the formerly overlooked youth into their

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projects. Such open-ended design strategies have led to extraordinary

impacts of several case studies in this book, such as the Rural Habitat
Development Programme, Al-Azhar Park, and the Orangi Pilot Project.

We can develop research methodologies of urbanism that are both

spatial and temporal. For example, the sociologist Camilo Vergara has
painstakingly photographed American cities for the past few decades.
His photographs of neighborhoods in cities like Camden, New Jersey
demonstrate how cities decline, building-by-building, block-by-block,
and neighborhood-by-neighborhood. His photographs also document
the ways in which urbanism offers signs of hope through micro-surgical
interventions such as a small community garden, a renovated house, or
a reopened corner store. This is often urbanism at its finest and prompts
us to analyze different types of transformation at different scales.

Ultimately, rather than being satisfied with the status quo, obsessing
primarily with spatial form, harking back to a nostalgic past, seeing
technology as the savior of the future, or pursuing well-meaning yet
overly singular objectives such as sustainability, the fundamental goal
of urbanism should be transformation. Urban transformation – as
defined in Chapter 1 – is a positive, drastic, and fundamental change
in the structure of a place. Urban transformation is also a measure of
doing good, of making progress. As I describe in Chapter 5, Pragmatism
defines progress in terms of moral progress, which consists of
increased human equality and increased imaginative power. Design,
with all its creative possibilities, is one powerful enactment of increased
imaginative power.

Understanding Transformation

There are many conventional ways of evaluating urbanism: examining

the amount of private profit and/or public revenue generated by a
project, noting the prestige and number of awards received, a project’s
appeal seen in the number of visitors and residents it attracts, popular
acclaim received in newspapers, magazines, on the internet and
television, and in the originality of a design idea or strategy. When
measuring transformation we do need to consider these qualities,
but there is also more, including the notion that the ultimate value of

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urbanism is the long-term impact it has on a city, whether it is creating

a vibrant environment, repairing past damage, generating economic
activity, mobilizing the community, connecting disparate areas, creating
truly public space, or fostering a sense of identity in a community.
The key is to avoid overly simplistic and formulaic thinking in favor
of a deeper and more multifaceted approach. Since transformation
is a commonly used – and misused – term, it is useful to place its
understanding within the larger context of its most common use in
public and scholarly discourse.

One common understanding of urban transformation is observed

through major shifts in patterns of the material city, in which significant
changes over scales of time and space are crucial. While historians
have examined such changes in the past, more recent research utilizes
historic maps along with new technologies such as aerial photography
and geographic information systems software to more accurately
track the spatial growth of metropolitan regions. For example, a
recent study examined the patterns of growth for six American cities
– Albuquerque, Atlanta, Boston, Las Vegas, Minneapolis, and Portland
– over a twenty-five-year period from 1980 to 2005.3 The study revealed
a number of critical findings: that there were a wide range of spatial
forms to be found in the material city, that while the expanse of the
city was increasing, its overall densities were reducing, that there were
regional variations in growth patterns, that there was a fragmentation
of regional spatial development, and that design strategies such as
urban growth control boundaries do seem to work, at least in the case
of Portland. There are exceptions to these overall trends, for example,
in Las Vegas, which was the fastest growing American city in the 1990s
and 2000s. Unlike the enormous outward spread of most American
cities, however, Las Vegas’s growth has been within well-defined single-
family housing subdivisions due to the limits imposed by its hot desert
basin as well as federal government-owned and protected land around
the city. These types of specificities belie the overly general descriptions
of spatial growth such as “sprawl.”

A second common understanding of urban transformation is in terms

of rapid and large-scale population growth. Rapid urbanization –
whether due to industrialization in the 19th century or migration within
developing regions in the 20th century – represents economic and

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social trends, but also reflects the human textures of cities. In the 19th
century, it was the rise of the modern industrial city as the

industrial revolution of the 18th and 19th centuries ushered in the

modern world, a world where manufacturing production was
the driving force of societies [and the] rise of industry required
the harnessing of new resources and new forms of energy to
drive machinery in the growing number of factories … Labour was
required for the factories and housing developed for workers close
to the new sources of employment. Industrial cities grew rapidly
providing sharply differentiated residential locations for the new
workers and new bosses.4

In the 20th century,

the last phase of this profound human [urban] transformation

is playing itself out in the less developed [sic] countries of
Asia, Oceania, Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean: we are
witnessing the urbanization of the globe. At this time, nearly
two-thirds of the world’s urban population, more than one and a
half billion people, live in the cities of the South. Within little more
than a generation their number will triple.5

The transformation referred to here is that of an unprecedented

growth rate of the urban population in the so-called developing or less
developed regions of the world, a trend that is going to continue well
into the 21st century.

A third type is measured through quality-of-life indicators such as

health, pollution, education, and infrastructure. These indicators
are meant to represent relative rankings of cities around the world,
with improvements indicators supposedly reflecting significant
improvements in the quality of life for its citizens. There is a burgeoning
literature on what is now known as the quality-of-urban-life indicators,
which are usually time-derived from aggregated spatial data using
official sources such as the census and include level of household
income, crime rates, pollution levels, housing costs, and so forth.6
A related approach involves modeling relationships between
characteristics of the urban environment and measures of people’s

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subjective assessments based on data collected through survey

research methods and analyzed using techniques such as regression
analysis or structural equation models. A more popular approach is the
city livability ranking by consulting firms and magazines such as The
Economist. For example, in The Economist’s 2011 rankings, Vancouver,
Canada was considered the most livable city in the world, while Harare,
Zimbabwe was considered the least livable based on ratings of stability
(e.g., prevalence of conflict and crime), health care (e.g., availability
and quality), culture and environment (e.g., level of climatic comfort,
degree of restrictions, consumer goods availability), education (e.g.,
availability and quality of private education), and infrastructure (e.g.,
quality of roads, transportation networks, energy).7 Such types of
quality-of-urban-life indicators contain biases such as those values that
tend to be most cherished by the US- and Europe-based researchers as
well as a reliance on the most available data. Still, urban policy-makers
and private investors in particular pay increasing attention to such
indicators, not only as measures of livability but also as policy goals to
achieve.

A fourth type is a nuanced qualitative judgment of cities that may be

achieved through what the urbanist Kevin Lynch calls performance
dimensions of the material city, such as vitality, sense, fit, access,
control, efficiency, and justice: “Performance dimensions are certain
identifiable characteristics of the performance of cities which are due
primarily to their spatial qualities and which are measurable scales,
along which different groups will prefer to achieve different positions.”8
For Lynch, in keeping with the spirit of this book, physical form must
interrelate with issues of economic and social justice, or political
power and local control. He makes a critical point that the design,
building, and modification of cities is “a human act, however complex,
accomplished for human motives. Uncovering those motives gives us
some first clues to the connections between values and environmental
form.”9 This is an excellent example of where the greatest potential
for urban transformation lies at the nexus of the material (e.g., the
everyday visceral experience of the four-dimensional city, including
time) and the immaterial (e.g., challenging underlying values and
changing existing processes).

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Overall, urban transformation continues to be discussed in terms

of spatial change. For example, in a recent book entitled Urban
Transformation, urbanist and scholar Peter Bosselman writes:

A lesson learned from urban renewal was to avoid the clearance

of neighborhoods but to encourage the filling of vacant land
within the existing parcel structure of city blocks. The process
starts with identifying the remnants of existing vitality in
inner-city neighborhoods and carefully adding new development
to strengthen the qualities that have survived. Such a model of
urban transformation is rooted in an understanding of a city’s
morphology, the geometry of its streets and blocks, and a division
of land that is relatively small but used by many overlapping
activities, all in need of access to public streets and entrances along
sidewalks. With the insertion of new development the opportunity
exists to improve and reform elements of the public realm, such as
streets, squares, or a waterfront.10

While there are indeed fundamental improvements to be made to the

public realm, the risk in such modes of thought is that an over-emphasis
on physical changes in the material city can lead to a relatively
superficial understanding of urban transformation.11

This book points to major shifts in our understanding of urban

transformation. These shifts propose that the form of the material city
is only a means or an accessory to deeper structural change, and that
transformation must have a direct impact on people’s lives. Ultimately,
urban transformation must be experienced as a process, an outcome,
or a possibility – even if, sometimes, it can only be recognized in
hindsight. For example, a fundamental change in power structures
would go far beyond commonplace notions of community participation;
rather, it is about enabling community voices, responsibility, and
empowerment all at once. In this regard, Pragmatism is exceptionally
insightful for understanding the potential of urbanism and useful in
assisting with more effective modes of practice.

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Pragmatism as Catalytic Lens

As we have seen, Pragmatism is a powerful lens with which to

understand the transformative potential of urbanism. Pragmatism
encourages us to remember and build into practice the notion that our
world is in flux with fluid boundaries between concepts and space,
and that creative and experimental interventions can have concrete
transformative social and physical effects on reality.12 Given the direct
and accessible language of Pragmatism, it is possible to overlook the
fact that it is a radical and innovative philosophy. Pragmatists such as
Rorty argue that the transformation from philosophy with a capital “P”
to philosophy with a small “p” is a transformation from a discipline
to an activity that aids individuals and societies to break free from
outworn vocabularies and attitudes.13 The field of urbanism requires
nothing less.

Pragmatism helps us to approach our work in the city by encouraging

us to consider how we can make large-scale, systemic changes that
are inclusive and democratic. This book argues for urbanism itself to
be a design strategy for such large-scale, systemic transformations
of cities, whether it takes the form of smaller incremental projects or
larger citywide initiatives. Of course, sweeping urban transformations
often fail or have a dark side that leads to further exploitation of the
under-privileged and reinforce the prevailing power structures. A critical
reading of the histories of urbanism can reveal many such pitfalls to
avoid and lessons to learn. With this caveat in mind, what are some
design strategies for urban transformation that emerge out of the book
so far? One strategy is to generate collective inquiry by posing powerful
questions such as: What can urbanism be? How do we know when
urbanism is transformative? How can we design projects that could
lead to moral progress? Provocative questions that get to the heart of
critical issues can lead to radically imaginative solutions.

A second strategy is to view profound philosophies such as Pragmatism

as sources of metacognition and inspiration (e.g., how the ways we
theorize about cities impact their materiality). Pragmatism sheds light
on two vital aspects of society that must be part of any future project
of urbanism: moral progress and democracy. Moral progress is not,
in the Pragmatist view, a matter of getting clearer and clearer about

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something that was there all the time. Rather, we make ourselves into
new kinds of people by inventing new forms of human life. We make
progress by having more alternatives to consider. The source of these
new alternatives is the human imagination. It is the ability to come up
with new ideas rather than the ability to get in touch with unchanging
essences that is the engine of moral progress.14 Urbanism is about the
constant re-invention of the city in which moral ideals are realized in the
everyday realm of practical endeavor.

Urbanists can harness the imaginative power necessary for moral

progress to engage in a dialectical relationship with the ongoing
project of democracy. Democratic procedures can result in improved
design outcomes and more importantly the very process of design
can strengthen democracy. For example, urbanists may conceive of
projects in ways that contribute to the constant building and rebuilding
of participatory and pluralist communities. Dewey was an important
advocate of participatory democracy as an ethical ideal that calls
upon men and women to build communities in which the necessary
opportunities and resources are available for every individual to fully
realize his or her particular capacities and powers through participation
in political, social, and cultural life.15 For Dewey, democracy is the
most desirable form of government because it provides the kinds of
freedom necessary for both individual growth and citizen cooperation:
“Democracy and the one, ultimate, ethical ideal of humanity are to
my mind synonymous.”16 Moreover, Pragmatists are interested in
formulating theory and practice that enhance the human condition,
expand human imagination, and make the world more just by
promoting moral progress through democracy. A central tenet of
these ideas is that the political institutions of any democracy should
be constantly subject to dialogue and improvement. In this spirit,
processes of urbanism can be not only more inclusive and participatory
but also designed to strengthen these ideals of democracy by being
more empowering.

Pragmatism can serve as a useful guide for knowing and judging when
transformation has occurred:

Those things are true which are verified through transaction with
nature; that is, through experience. Verification, in turn, is defined

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in terms of usefulness. A proposition may be said to be verified if it

serves as a useful guide to future conduct. Thus, Pragmatism aims
to overcome the old philosophical puzzle of how we come to have
knowledge about the world.17

Knowing when transformation has occurred is based on collective

agreement by an engaged community that investigates and verifies,
often through everyday actions and reflections. A critical aspect of
knowing and judging is to theorize about urbanism and transformation.
For the Pragmatists, theories are ways of making sense of our needs,
as when “we wake up one morning and find ourselves in a new
place and then we build a ladder to explain how we got here …
The [non-Pragmatist] is the person who admires the ladder.”18 The
Pragmatist, on the other hand, would not only ask whether this is a
good place to be but would also realize that while theory offers us great
insights and inspirations, it can never tell us what to do; only we can
tell us what to do.

A third design strategy for urban transformation is to gain rich and

complex insights (e.g., learning from accidental urbanism, technical
projects as means of community empowerment) from actual case
studies, however flawed they may be. The case studies in this book
are vivid illustrations of design as a much broader process than is
conventionally understood. New political–economic structures and
design processes may be inclusive and democratic; that is, they involve
not only the broadest possible range of stakeholders, but equally
importantly, include those who are the least privileged (e.g., partnering
with the poor in the Orangi Pilot Project). Design does not occur outside
the political realm; rather, it is integral to the political process as the city
is integral to the spatial political economy (e.g., participatory budgeting
and the Parque da Terceira Agua). Design of cities does not begin and
end with the conventionally limited creative process that centers on
urbanists, architects, landscape architects, or city planners; rather, it is
part and parcel of the larger city-building process, including political
decision-making, legal regulations, and the allocation of financial
resources (e.g., transparent policy-making in the Uptown Whittier
Specific Plan).

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One way in which urbanists can harness the power of design for
inclusive city building is to emphasize the significance of public
investment in and public stewardship of streets, sidewalks, plazas, civic
buildings, and parks. The public realm is critical because it is by far the
most significant amenity that a city offers its residents, and it is where
urbanity – the best a city has to offer – occurs (e.g., the active green
space of Al-Azhar Park). In addition, the outcomes of transformative
processes of urbanism may assume other guises, such as providing
greater choices in types of urban form to better meet people’s needs
and preferences (e.g., different types of housing and public spaces in
the Olympic Village), while urbanists should play a prominent role
in ongoing public conversations about defining and redefining what is a
desirable city (e.g., developing future scenarios in the MIT Experimental
Design Studio). Some manifestations of urban transformation are more
apparent than others such as the fundamental change in the character
of a place (e.g., reconnecting neighborhoods through the Big Dig), or
drastic change within a relatively short period, including an impact on
people’s lives (e.g., creating social and economic vibrancy as a result of
the Centre Pompidou). Transformation can also be a measure of being
effective in urbanism (e.g., redesigning institutional relationships in the
India Habitat Centre).

The challenge for urbanists is how to practice on a day-to-day basis

with such goals and strategies in mind. In many instances the single
most formidable weapon that urbanists can wield is long-term
commitment to the people and places that make up cities. Within
this long-term commitment there can be multiple modes of practice:
grassroots or utopian movements that involve the intervention of new
ideas, rekindling of dormant circumstances, implementation of physical
projects, or even discovery of accidental successes. We practice by

being well versed. By being modest. By being open to a constant

feedback loop that allows these multifaceted engagements
to become concomitant, so that they may understand and
acknowledge their interdependence, learn from one another, and
mature together through a constant nurturing process, embracing
the idea of collective and collaborative engagement as superior
to the limitations of a single mind. If urbanists are to truly engage
with and transform cities, there must be a commitment to the

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Transformations: Urbanism as Transformation

processes as much as, or even more so, than the products.

The complexity of the contemporary city deserves this kind of
expansive, multidimensional engagement. To struggle with, to
propose, to fall short, to learn, to try again, in a never-ending quest
for transforming the city. By challenging themselves, urbanists
continually grow to be better and stronger.19

As the world becomes increasingly urbanized and cities become

larger and more complex, project ecologies of urbanists, associated
activists and professionals, and larger social and political
movements can collaborate in highly effective ways through
communities of practice. Communities of practice are networks
of individuals whose lives are bound together through multiple
day-to-day relationships, based on the same sets of expertise, a
common set of technological knowledge, and similar experience
with a particular set of problem-solving techniques. Even more
critical than shared professional expertise for creating collaborative
communities of interdisciplinary practice are sets of common and
deeply felt values and commitments, such as adopting activist and
advocacy approaches towards city-design-and-building processes.
Creating collaborative communities of multidisciplinary practice
that share similar values and commitments will be essential to
transforming cities.

Higher Aspirations
The conceptual shifts and case studies presented in this book are
examples of effective design strategies for urban transformation.
Using this extremely robust foundation as a springboard, we can
do even better by aspiring to greater heights. To do this we can
harness a fourth and perhaps even more creative and potent design
strategy, which draws its inspiration from exemplary transformations
in history. The Indian independence movement remains one of the
largest mobilizations of mass energy when 390 million people gained
independence from one of the largest and most oppressive colonial
powers in history: the British Empire. This movement exercised a form
of power which was dramatically different from that of governments,
or armies, or violent revolutions. This was because its leadership,

220
 Transformations: Urbanism as Transformation

especially Mahatma Gandhi, conceived of how to convert the power of

nonviolence into effective political action:

Transforming leadership ultimately becomes moral in that it raises

the level of human conduct and ethical aspiration of both leader
and led, and thus it has a transforming effect on both. Perhaps
the best modern example is Gandhi, who aroused and elevated
the hopes and demands of millions of Indians and whose life and
personality were enhanced in the process.20

A crucial aspect of Gandhi’s originality as a thinker and leader was

the way he forged connections in theory and practice among ideas of
freedom, nonviolent power, and civic responsibility. The scale of the
challenge – of overthrowing an oppressive power – called for a large-
scale movement that combined visionary ideas with equally visionary
actions:

Gandhi succeeded in a remarkably short period, from 1919 to 1922,

in forging a mass movement “for real freedom or power” that was
entirely unprecedented in India. This may be attributed to the way
that he fulfilled the movement’s needs of organization, leadership,
and ideology. His most dramatic political achievement at this time
was the transformation of the Indian National Congress into a
political organization with a mass base. “I do not rely merely on
the lawyer class,” Gandhi said, “or highly educated men to carry
out all the stages of non-co-operation. My hope is more with the
masses. My faith in the people is boundless. Theirs is an amazingly
responsive nature. Let not their leaders distrust them.”21

Urbanists would be wise to consider how large-scale systemic

transformation in our cities can be enabled through similar movements,
albeit with different goals and at different scales.

In 1955, Martin Luther King Jr. helped lead the first great African-
American nonviolent demonstration of contemporary times in
the United States: the Montgomery bus boycott. Soon thereafter, the
Supreme Court of the United States declared unconstitutional the laws
requiring segregation on buses. Between 1957 and 1968, King traveled
six million miles and spoke over 2,500 times, appearing wherever there

221
Transformations: Urbanism as Transformation

was injustice, protest, and action; meanwhile he wrote many books as

well as numerous articles. He led a massive protest in Birmingham;
he planned the drives in Alabama for the registration of African-
Americans as voters; and he directed a peaceful march on Washington,
DC of 250,000 people. In 1968, while standing on the balcony of his
motel room in Memphis, Tennessee, where he was to lead a protest
march seeking economic and social justice for the striking sanitation
workers of that city, he was assassinated. For King, like Gandhi, these
ideas and actions worked towards the kind of structural change that
is the hallmark of genuine transformation: “True compassion is more
than flinging a coin to a beggar; it comes to see that an edifice which
produces beggars needs restructuring.”22

King believed in large-scale movements to produce systemic

transformation and his legacy lived on, starting soon after his
assassination:

On 8 April [1968], an estimated 42,000 people led by Coretta Scott

King, [the Southern Christian Leaderships Conference], and union
leaders silently marched through Memphis in honor of King,
demanding that [Mayor Henry] Loeb give in to the union’s requests.
In front of the City Hall, [the American Federation of State, County,
and Municipal Employees] pledged to support the workers until
“we have justice.” Negotiators finally reached a deal on 16 April,
allowing the City Council to recognize the union and guaranteeing a
better wage. While the deal brought the strike to an end, the union
had to threaten another strike several months later to press the city
to follow through with its commitment.23

King’s work lived on because he was able to generate mass

mobilizations and long-term commitments; in urbanism, one could
envision mass mobilizations of ideas and strategies as well as of
people.

What might these historic examples of breathtaking transformation

suggest to us about design strategies for transforming cities? Gandhi’s
and King’s strategies worked at multiple levels. They worked at a
material level because the political acts of nonviolence occurred
spatially in cities and in the public realm. The strategies worked with

222
 Transformations: Urbanism as Transformation

and often through existing political and institutional frameworks, while

simultaneously challenging and shifting them. The strategies were
also personal and even spiritual, since they touched upon people’s
most cherished values such as liberation and self-fulfillment. Gandhi
and King were able to accomplish so much in large part because they
helped create communities of practice that lasted decades and that
worked collectively towards fundamental change. Finally – and this
may be the most valuable lesson for designers and urbanists – their
constructions of radical imaginaries involved an enormous amount of
struggle and a great deal of sacrifice over long periods of time.

223
Notes

1 What Can Urbanism Be?

1 There are seminal books on theories and practices of urbanism over the past fifty years
or so which are not directly germane to the arguments presented in this chapter. These
include Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities (New York: Random
House, 1961), Peter Katz, The New Urbanism: Toward an Architecture of Community
(New York: McGraw Hill Professional, 1993), Rem Koolhaas, Delirious New York: A
Retroactive Manifesto for Manhattan (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978), and
Robert Venturi et al., Learning from Las Vegas: The Forgotten Symbolism of Architectural
Form (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1977). Other books and ideas are discussed in
subsequent chapters in the context of proposed conceptual shifts towards city as flux,
consequences of design, and urbanism as a creative political act.
2 Aseem Inam, What Can Urban Design Be? (Paper presented at the World Planning
Schools Congress, Mexico City, 2006).
3 Richard Dobbs, Sven Smit, Jaana Remes, James Manyika, Charles Roxburgh, and
Alejandra Restrepo, Urban World: Mapping the Economic Power of Cities (Paris:
McKinsey Global Institute, 2011), p. 1.
4 UNFPA, State of the World Population 2007: Unleashing the Potential of Urban Growth
(New York: United Nations Population Fund, 2007), pp. 1–6.
5 CMF, The World’s Largest Cities and Urban Areas in 2020 (London: City Mayors
Foundation), accessed January 4, 2013: [Link]/statistics/urban_2020_1.
html.
6 CMF, The World’s Fastest Growing Cities and Urban Areas from 2006 to 2020 (London:
City Mayors Foundation), accessed January 4, 2013: [Link]/statistics/
urban_growth1.html.
7 Gyan Prakash, Introduction, in The Spaces of the Modern City: Imaginaries, Politics,
and Everyday Life, edited by Gyan Prakash and Kevin Kruse (Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 2008), p. 2.

224
 Notes

8 Kim Dovey, Framing Places: Mediating Power in Built Form (London: Routledge, 1999).
9 Paul Knox, Cities and Design (London: Routledge, 2011), p. 35, and Ed Soja, The Socio-
Spatial Dialectic, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, vol. 70, no. 2,
1980, pp. 207–225.
10 Spiro Kostof, The City Shaped: Urban Patterns and Meanings Through History (Boston,
MA: Bulfinch, 1991), p. 52.
11 Alex Krieger, Where and How Does Urban Design Happen?, in Urban Design, edited by
Alex Krieger and William Saunders (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2009),
pp. 115–129.
12 Alexander Cuthbert, Whose Urban Design? Journal of Urban Design, vol. 15, no. 3,
August 2010, pp. 443–448.
13 Charles Steger, Urban Design, in Contemporary Urban Planning, 6th edn, edited by John
Levy (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2003), p. 145.
14 Don Carter and Raymond Gindroz, Urban Design Plans, in Planning and Urban Design
Standards, edited by Frederick Steiner and Kent Butler (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley &
Sons, Inc., 2007), p. 10.
15 Jon Lang, Urban Design as a Discipline and as a Profession, in The Urban Design Reader,
edited by Michael Larice and Elizabeth Macdonald (Abingdon: Routledge, 2007), p. 465.
16 Denise Scott Brown, The Public Realm: The Public Sector and The Public Interest in Urban
Design, in Urban Concepts (London: Academy Group, 1990), p. 21.
17 For example, see Jerold Kayden, Privately Owned Public Space: The New York City
Experience (New York: Wiley, 2000), Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris and Tridib Banerjee,
Urban Design Downtown: Poetics and Politics of Form (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1998), and Kurt Anderson, Person of the Year: The Protestor, Time, vol. 178, no. 25,
December 26, 2011, pp. 54–89.
18 Alexander Cuthbert, The Form of Cities: Political Economy and Urban Design (Malden,
MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2006), p. 84.
19 Jonathan Barnett, A Short Guide to 60 of the Newest Urbanisms, Planning, vol. 77, no. 4,
2011, pp. 19–20.
20 For an illustrative example, see the excellent book by Besim Hakim, Arabic-Islamic Cities:
Building and Planning Principles (London: KPI Limited, 1986).
21 Alex Krieger, Where and How Does Urban Design Happen, in Urban Design, edited by
Alex Krieger and William Saunders (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2009),
pp. 115–129.
22 Anne Moudon, A Catholic Approach to What Urban Designers Should Know, Journal of
Planning Literature, vol. 6, no. 4, May 1992, pp. 331–349.
23 Douglas Kelbaugh and Kit McCullough, eds, Writing Urbanism: A Design Reader (New
York: Routledge, 2008).
24 Tridib Banerjee and Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris, eds, Companion to Urban Design
(Abingdon: Routledge, 2011).
25 Jeff Hou, Aseem Inam, and Clara Irazabal, New Directions: The Future of the City, Panel
at the Symposium Making Cities: Whither Design?, Parsons The New School for Design,
New York, September 24, 2011, video accessed on February 18, 2013. [Link]
com/54868902.
26 Taner Oc and Steven Tiesdell, Editorial: Re-emergent Urban Design, Journal of Urban
Design, vol. 1, no. 1, February 1996, p. 5.
27 Mike Biddulph, The Problem with Thinking About or for Urban Design, Journal of Urban
Design, vol. 17, no. 1, February 2012, pp. 1–20.
28 Aseem Inam, From Dichotomy to Dialectic: Practicing Theory in Urban Design, Journal of
Urban Design, vol. 16, no. 2, May 2011, pp. 257–277.
29 Ann Forsyth, Innovation in Urban Design: Does Research Help? Journal of Urban Design,
vol. 12, no. 3, October 2007, pp. 461–473.
30 Douglas Kelbaugh, Towards an Integrated Paradigm: Further Thoughts on the Three
Urbanisms, Places, vol. 19, no. 2, 2007, pp. 12–19.

225
Notes

31 Jonah Lehrer, A Physicist Solves the City, New York Times Magazine, December 17,
2010.
32 Kelly Clifton, Reid Ewing, Gerrit-Jan Knaap, and Yan Song, Quantitative Analysis of
Urban Form: A Multidisciplinary Review, Journal of Urbanism: International Research on
Placemaking and Urban Sustainability, vol. 1, no. 1, May 2008, pp. 17–45.
33 David Grahame Shane, Recombinant Urbanism: Conceptual Modeling in Architecture,
Urban Design, and City Theory (Chichester: Wiley-Academy), p. 13.
34 Ibid., pp. 176–243.
35 Ibid., p. 6.
36 Ibid., p. 29.
37 Ibid., p. 22.
38 A sampling of the range of these books includes: Lance Jay Brown, David Dixon, and
Oliver Gillham, Urban Design for an Urban Century: Placemaking for People (Chichester:
Wiley, 2009); Robert Steuteville and Philip Langdon, eds, New Urbanism: Best Practices
Guide, 4th edn (Ithaca, NY: New Urban News Publications, 2009); Smart Growth
Network, Getting to Smart Growth II: 100 More Policies for Implementation (Washington,
DC: International City/County Management Association, 2008); Urban Design Associates,
The Urban Design Handbook: Techniques and Working Methods (New York: W.W. Norton
and Company, 2003); Alexander Garvin, The American City: What Works, What Doesn’t
(Chichester: Wiley Professional, 2002); and Clare Cooper Marcus and Carolyn Francis,
eds, People Places: Design Guidelines for Urban Open Space, 2nd edn (New York: John
Wiley & Sons, 1998).
39 Christopher Alexander, Sara Ishikawa, and Murray Silverstein, with Max Jacobson, Ingrid
Fiksdahl-King, and Shlomo Angel, A Pattern Language: Towns · Buildings · Construction
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1977).
40 UN HABITAT, Dubai International Award for Best Practices (Nairobi: UN HABITAT, 2012),
accessed March 19, 2013: [Link]/[Link]?typeid=9&catid=1&cid=150.
41 Bruner Foundation Inc., The Rudy Bruner Award (Cambridge, MA: Brunder
Foundation, 2013), accessed March 19, 2013: [Link]/rba/index.
php?page=aboutRBA&sidebar=1.
42 John Punter, Developing Urban Design as Public Policy: Best Practice Principles for
Design Review and Development Management, Journal of Urban Design, vol. 12, no. 2,
2007, pp. 167–202.
43 Patrik Schumacher, Parametricism: A New Global Style of Architecture and Urban
Design, Architectural Design, vol. 79, no. 4, p. 15.
44 Charles Waldheim, ed., The Landscape Urbanism Reader (Princeton, NJ: Princeton
Architectural Press, 2006), p. 11.
45 American Heritage Dictionary, 3rd edn (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1996).
46 Ernest Sternberg, An Integrative Theory of Urban Design, Journal of the American
Planning Association, vol. 66, no. 3, 2000, pp. 265–278.
47 Niraj Verma, Urban Design: An Incompletely Theorized Project, in Companion to Urban
Design, edited by Tridib Banerjee and Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris (Abingdon: Routledge,
2011), pp. 57–69.
48 Louis Wirth, Urbanism as a Way of Life, The American Journal of Sociology, vol. 44, no.
1, July 1938, pp. 1–24.
49 Ibid., p. 20.
50 Kevin Lynch, Good City Form (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1981), pp. 38–39.
51 Ibid., pp. 277–291.
52 Ibid., p. 320.
53 Alexander Cuthbert, Understanding Cities: Method in Design (New York: Routledge,
2011), p. 9.
54 Kevin Lynch, Good City Form (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1981), p. 1.
55 Julian Huxley, The Humanist Frame (London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd., 1961).
56 Kevin Lynch, Good City Form (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1981), p. 108.

226
 Notes

57 Alexander Cuthbert, The Form of Cities: Political Economy and Urban Design (Malden,
MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2006), p. 80.
58 Ibid., p. 15.
59 Manuel Castells, The City and the Grassroots: A Cross-Cultural Theory of Urban Social
Movements (Berkeley: University of Calfornia Press, 1983), p. 303.
60 Sharon Zukin, The Postmodern Debate Over Urban Form, Theory, Culture & Society, vol.
5, 1988, p. 435.
61 Paul Knox, Cities and Design (London: Routledge, 2011), p. 101.
62 See critiques in Aseem Inam, Meaningful Urban Design: Telelogical/Catalytic/Relevent.
Journal of Urban Design, vol. 7, no. 1, 2002, pp. 35–58, and Alexander Cuthbert, The
Form of Cities: Political Economy and Urban Design (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing,
2006).
63 Alex Krieger and William Saunders, eds, Urban Design (Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, 2009).
64 Charles Waldheim, ed., The Landscape Urbanism Reader (Princeton, NJ: Princeton
Architectural Press, 2006).
65 For example, see Alex Krieger and William Saunders, eds, Urban Design (Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 2009).
66 For example, see Jonathan Barnett, Redesigning Cities: Principles, Practice,
Implementation (Washington, DC: American Planning Association Planners Press, 2003).
67 UN Habitat, Planning Sustainable Cities: Global Report on Human Settlements 2009
(Nairobi: United Nations Human Settlements Programme, and London: Earthscan, 2009).

2 Discovering the Nexus: Pragmatism, Rural

Habitat, and Urbanism
1 For the different strains of thought in Pragmatism, see, for example, two concise and
well-written books: John Murphy, Pragmatism: From Peirce to Davidson (Boulder, CO:
Westview Press, 1990), and Cornelis de Waal, On Pragmatism (Belmont, CA: Thomson/
Wadsworth, 2005).
2 Gary Bridge, Reason in the City of Difference: Pragmatism, Communicative Action and
Contemporary Urbanism (London: Routledge, 2005), p. 3.
3 H.S. Thayer, Introduction, in Pragmatism: The Classic Writings, edited by H.S. Thayer
(Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1982), p. 11.
4 Louis Menand, An Introduction to Pragmatism, in Pragmatism: A Reader, edited by Louis
Menand (New York: Vintage Books, 1997), p. xi.
5 Ernest Nagel, cited by Vincent Colapietro and Charles Sanders Peirce in A Companion to
Pragmatism, edited by John Shook and Joseph Margolis (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell,
2009), p. 13.
6 Charles Peirce, How to Make Our Ideas Clear, Popular Science Monthly, vol.
12, 1878, p. 293. Accessed September 14, 2012: [Link]/stream/
popscimonthly12yoummiss#page/n9/mode/1up.
7 These characteristics and principles are drawn from the work of several authors,
including Trevor Barnes, American Pragmatism: Towards a Geographical Introduction,
Geoforum, vol. 39, 2008, pp. 1542–1554; Richard Bernstein, The Pragmatic Century, in
The Pragmatic Century: Conversations with Richard J. Bernstein, edited by Sheila Greeve
Davaney and Warren Frisina (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2006), pp. 1–14;
and Louis Menand, An Introduction to Pragmatism, in Pragmatism: A Reader, edited by
Louis Menand (New York: Vintage Books, 1997).
8 William James, Pragmatism: An Old Way for Some New Ways of Thinking (New York:
Longmans, Green and Co., 1907), p. 22.

227
Notes

9 Quoted by Louis Menand, An Introduction to Pragmatism, in Pragmatism: A Reader,

edited by Louis Menand (New York: Vintage Books, 1997), p. xxi.
10 Peter Reason, Pragmatist Philosophy and Action Research: Readings and Conversation
with Richard Rorty, Action Research, vol. 1, no. 1, 2003, p. 106.
11 Trevor Barnes, American Pragmatism: Towards a Geographical Introduction, Geoforum,
vol. 39, 2008, p. 1545.
12 Isaac Newton, Letter to Robert Hooke, February 5, 1676, in The Correspondence of Isaac
Newton: Volume 1, edited by H.W. Turnbull (London: Published for the Royal Society by
the University Press, 1959), p. 416.
13 Trevor Barnes, American Pragmatism: Towards a Geographical Introduction, Geoforum,
vol. 39, 2008, p. 1545.
14 Stephen Gould, The Structure of Evolutionary Theory (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 2002).
15 Louis Menand, An Introduction to Pragmatism, in Pragmatism: A Reader, edited by Louis
Menand (New York: Vintage Books, 1997), pp. xi–xii.
16 Aseem Inam, Planning for the Unplanned: Recovering from Crises in Megacities (New
York: Routledge, 2005).
17 Quoted by Louis Menand, The Metaphysical Club: A Story of Ideas in America (New York:
Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux, 2001), p. 430.
18 Patsy Healey, The Pragmatic Tradition in Planning Thought, Journal of Planning Education
and Research, vol. 28, no. 3, March 2009, p. 280.
19 Trevor Barnes, American Pragmatism: Towards a Geographical Introduction, Geoforum,
vol. 39, no. 4, 2008, pp. 1544–1545.
20 Richard Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (Oxford: Blackwell, 1980), p. 318.
21 Richard Bernstein, The Pragmatic Century, in The Pragmatic Century: Conversations with
Richard J. Bernstein, edited by Sheila Davaney and Warren Frisina (Albany, NY: State
University of New York Press, 2006), pp. 1–14.
22 Patsy Healey, The Pragmatic Tradition in Planning Thought, Journal of Planning Education
and Research, vol. 28, no. 3, 2009, pp. 277–292.
23 Raymond Pfeiffer, An Introduction to Classic American Pragmatism, Philosophy Now,
issue 43, July 2012. Accessed September 14, 2012: [Link]
An_Introduction_to_Classic_American_Pragmatism.
24 John Dewey, Creative Intelligence: Essays in the Pragmatic Attitude (New York: Holt,
1917), p. 65.
25 Richard Rorty, Things in the Making: Contemporary Architecture and the Pragmatist
Imagination, draft Remarks Written for the Museum of Modern Art (New York)
Symposium 2000 (Irvine, CA: Richard Rorty Papers, University of California, Irvine
Libraries: Special Collections and Archives, 2000).
26 Gary Bridge, Reason in the City of Difference: Pragmatism, Communicative Action and
Contemporary Urbanism (London: Routledge, 2005).
27 Trevor Barnes, American Pragmatism: Towards a Geographical Introduction, Geoforum,
vol. 39, 2008, pp. 1551–1552.
28 AKPBSI, Inspiring Change Through Safe, Secure & Healthy Habitat (Mumbai: Aga Khan
Planning and Building Service India, 2011), p. 1.
29 Aseem Inam, Situation Review: Gujarat: Rural Habitat Development Programme
(Mumbai: Aga Khan Planning and Building Service India, May 8, 1987).
30 Aseem Inam, Abad: Rural Habitat Development Programme: Executive Summary
(Mumbai: Aga Khan Planning and Building Service India, November 13, 1987), p. 3.
31 AKDN, Planning and Building Activities in India (Geneva: Aga Khan Development
Network, 2007). Accessed October 7, 2011: [Link]/india_building.asp.
32 Aseem Inam, Area Selection: Gujarat: Rural Habitat Development Programme (Mumbai:
Aga Khan Planning and Building Service India, May 15, 1987), p. 2.
33 Aseem Inam, Abad: Rural Habitat Development Programme Annual Progress Report
(Mumbai: Aga Khan Development Network, 1988), p. 11.

228
 Notes

34 Trevor Barnes, American Pragmatism: Towards a Geographical Introduction, Geoforum,

vol. 39, 2008, p. 1544.
35 Anita Miya, telephone interview with Jana Grammens in New York on April 9, 2012. Anita
Miya, Head of Developmental Programs, Aga Khan Planning and Building Service India,
Mumbai.
36 AKDN, Gujarat Environmental Health Improvement Programme: Improving Rural Water
Supply and Sanitation (New Delhi: Aga Khan Development Network, 2003), p. 2.
37 AKDN, Planning and Building Activities in India (Geneva: Aga Khan Development
Network, 2007). Accessed October 7, 2011: [Link]
38 AKDN, The Jammu and Kashmir Earthquake Reconstruction Programme (New Delhi:
Aga Khan Development Network, 2010), pp. 9–13.
39 AKDN, Stemming the Tide: Relief, Reconstruction, and Development in Costal Andhra
Pradesh (New Delhi: Aga Khan Development Network, 2009), pp. 3 and 5.
40 AKDN, Aga Khan Planning and Building Service, India (New Delhi: Aga Khan
Development Network, 2005), p. 3.
41 Bella Patel Uttekar et al., Environmental Health Improvement Program (EHIP): Gujarat: A
Baseline Survey (Vadodara, India: Centre for Operations Research and Training, 2007).

3 Beyond Objects: City as Flux

1 Kevin Lynch, Good City Form (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1981).
2 William James, A Pluralistic Universe (New York: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1909),
pp. 263–264.
3 See especially William James, A Pluralistic Universe: Hibbert Lectures at Manchester
College on the Present Situation in Philosophy (New York: Longmans, Green, and
Co., 1909), and Russell Goodman, James on the Nonconceptual, Midwest Studies in
Philosophy, vol. 28, no. 1, 2004, pp. 137–148.
4 William James, A Pluralistic Universe: Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the
Present Situation in Philosophy (New York: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1909), p. 96.
5 Gary Hack, Urban Flux, in Companion to Urban Design, edited by Tridib Banerjee and
Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris (New York: Routledge, 2011), p. 446.
6 Ibid., p. 447.
7 Spiro Kostof, The City Assembled: The Elements of Urban Form through History (New
York: Bulfinch Press, 1999), pp. 266–277.
8 Gary Hack, Urban Flux, in Companion to Urban Design, edited by Tridib Banerjee and
Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris (New York: Routledge, 2011), p. 447.
9 William James, A Pluralistic Universe: Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the
Present Situation in Philosophy (New York: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1909), p. 253.
10 Spiro Kostof, The City Shaped: Urban Patterns and Meaning Through History (New York:
Bulfinch Press, 1993), p. 13.
11 Patrick Geddes, Cities in Evolution: An Introduction to the Town Planning Movement and
to the Study of Civics (London: Williams, 1915), p. 107.
12 James Vance, The Continuing City: Urban Morphology in Western Civilization (Baltimore,
MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990), p. 38.
13 David Harvey, From Space to Place and Back Again: Reflections on the Condition of
Postmodernity. Paper: UCLA Graduate School of Architecture and Planning Colloquium,
May 13, 1991, p. 39.
14 David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity (Oxford: Blackwell, 1990).
15 David Harvey, The Urban Process Under Capitalism: A Framework for Analysis,
International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, vol. 2, no. 1, 1978, p. 113.
16 Manuel Castells, The City and the Grassroots: A Cross-Cultural Theory of Urban Social
Movements (London: Edward Arnold, 1983), p. 314.

229
Notes

17 Justin Davidson, The Glass Stampede, New York Magazine, September 28, 2008,
accessed February 22, 2012: [Link]
18 Spiro Kostof, The City Assembled: The Elements of Urban Form through History (New
York: Bulfinch Press, 1999), p. 280.
19 Ibid., p. 250.
20 Anne Moudon, Built for Change: Neighborhood Architecture in San Francisco
(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1989).
21 Gary Hack, Urban Flux, in Companion to Urban Design, edited by Tridib Banerjee and
Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris (New York: Routledge, 2011), p. 449.
22 Christopher Alexander, A New Theory of Urban Design (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1987).
23 Michael Mehaffy, Generative Methods in Urban Design: A Progress Assessment, Journal
of Urbanism, vol. 1, no. 1, 2008, p. 62.
24 Hardimos Tsoukas and Robert Chia, On Organizational Becoming: Rethinking
Organizational Change, Organization Science, vol. 13, no. 5, 2002, p. 570.
25 Peter Rowe, Building Barcelona: A Second Renaixença (Barcelona: Barcelona Regional
and ACTAR, 2006), p. 88.
26 Oriol Nel×lo, The Olympic Games as a Tool for Urban Renewal: The Experience of
Barcelona’92 Olympic Village (Barcelona: Centre d’Estudis Olímpics UAM, 1997), p. 6.
27 Ibid., p. 4.
28 Sergi Valera and Joan Guàrdia, Urban Social Identity and Sustainability: Barcelona’s
Olympic Village, Environment and Behavior, vol. 34, no. 1, 2002, p. 56.
29 Peter Rowe, Building Barcelona: A Second Renaixença (Barcelona: Barcelona Regional
and ACTAR, 2006), p. 95.
30 Peter Buchanan, Urbane Village, Architectural Review, vol. 191, no. 1146, August 1992,
p. 30.
31 Jordi Carbonell, The Olympic Village, Ten Years On: Barcelona: The Legacy of the Games
1992–2002, published report, 2005. Barcelona: Centre d’Estudis Olímpícs, Universitat
Autònoma de Barcelona, accessed January 16, 2012: [Link]
[Link].
32 Ibid., pp. 3–4.
33 Joseph Giovannini, Olympic Overhaul, Progressive Architecture, vol. 73, no. 7, July
1992, pp. 62–69; and Peter Rowe, Building Barcelona: A Second Renaixença (Barcelona:
Barcelona Regional and ACTAR, 2006).
34 Jordi Carbonell, The Olympic Village, Ten Years On: Barcelona: The Legacy of the Games
1992–2002. (Barcelona: Centre d’Estudis Olímpícs, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona,
2005, p. 5), accessed January 16, 2012: [Link]
35 Peter Rowe, Building Barcelona: A Second Renaixença (Barcelona: Barcelona Regional
and ACTAR, 2006), p. 98.
36 Jordi Carbonell, The Olympic Village, Ten Years On: Barcelona: The Legacy of the Games
1992–2002. (Barcelona: Centre d’Estudis Olímpícs, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona:
2005, p. 7), accessed January 16, 2012: [Link]
37 Oriol Nel×lo, The Olympic Games as a Tool for Urban Renewal: The Experience of
Barcelona’92 Olympic Village (Barcelona: Centre d’Estudis Olímpics UAM, 1997),
pp. 5–6.
38 Jordi Carbonell, The Olympic Village, Ten Years On: Barcelona: The Legacy of the Games
1992–2002. (Barcelona: Centre d’Estudis Olímpícs, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona,
2005, p. 7), accessed January 16, 2012: [Link]
39 Peter Rowe, Building Barcelona: A Second Renaixença (Barcelona: Barcelona Regional
and ACTAR, 2006), p. 100.
40 David Cohn, Olympic Village, Architectural Record, vol. 180, no. 8, August 1992: page 107.
41 Joseph Giovannini, Olympic Overhaul, Progressive Architecture, vol. 73, no. 7, July 1992,
p. 64; and Peter Rowe, Building Barcelona: A Second Renaixença (Barcelona: Barcelona
Regional and ACTAR, 2006).

230
 Notes

42 Jordi Carbonell, The Olympic Village, Ten Years On: Barcelona: The Legacy of the Games
1992–2002 (Barcelona: Centre d’Estudis Olímpícs, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona,
2005) accessed January 16, 2012: [Link]
43 Ferran Brunet, An Economical Analysis of the Barcelona ’92 Olympic Games; Miquel
de Moragas and Miquel Botella, The Keys to Success: The Social, Sporting, Economic
and Communications Impact of Barcelona’92 (Barcelona: Servei de Publicacions de la
UAB, 1995), pp. 203–237; and Francesc Muñoz, Olympic Urbanism and Olympic Villages:
Planning Strategies in Olympic Host Cities, London 1908 to London 2012, Editorial Board
of the Sociological Review, 2006, pp. 175–187.
44 Susan Doubilet, Barcelona’s Olympic Village, Progressive Architecture, vol. 68, March
1987, p. 46.
45 Francesc Muñoz, Olympic Urbanism and Olympic Villages: Planning Strategies in
Olympic Host Cities, London 1908 to London 2012, Editorial Board of the Sociological
Review, 2006, pp. 175–187; also Joseph Giovannini, Olympic Overhaul, Progressive
Architecture, vol. 73, no. 7, p. 64.
46 Peter Rowe, Building Barcelona: A Second Renaixença (Barcelona: Barcelona Regional
and ACTAR, 2006), pp. 87–88.
47 For example, see Donald McNeill, Mapping the European Urban Left: The Barcelona
Experience, Antipode, vol. 35, no. 1, January 2003, pp. 74–94; also Nico Calavita and
Amador Ferrer, Behind Barcelona’s Success Story: Citizen Movements and Planners’
Power, Journal of Urban History, vol. 26, no. 6, September 2000, pp. 793–807.
48 For example, see David Cohn, Olympic Village, Architectural Record, vol. 180, August
1992, p. 107; Joseph Giovannini, Olympic Overhaul, Progressive Architecture, vol. 73,
no. 7, July 1992, p. 64; also Peter Rowe, Building Barcelona: A Second Renaixença
(Barcelona: Barcelona Regional and ACTAR, 2006).
49 Susan Doubilet, Barcelona’s Olympic Village, Progressive Architecture, vol. 68, March
1987, p. 45.
50 Nico Calavita and Amador Ferrer, Behind Barcelona’s Success Story: Citizen Movements
and Planners’ Power, Journal of Urban History, vol. 26, no. 6, September 2000, p. 795.
51 Oriol Nel×lo, The Olympic Games as a Tool for Urban Renewal: The Experience of
Barcelona’92 Olympic Village (Barcelona: Centre d’Estudis Olímpics UAM, 1997), p. 4.
52 Juli Esteban, The Planning Project: Bringing Value to the Periphery, Recovering the
Centre, in Transforming Barcelona, edited by Tim Marshall (London: Routledge, 2004),
pp. 111–150.
53 Ibid., p. 114.
54 Nico Calavita and Amador Ferrer, Behind Barcelona’s Success Story: Citizen Movements
and Planners’ Power, Journal of Urban History, vol. 26, no. 6, September 2000, p. 803.
55 Joseph Giovannini, Olympic Overhaul, Progressive Architecture, vol. 73, no. 7, July 1992,
p. 62.
56 John Gold and Margaret Gold, Olympic Cities: Regeneration, City Rebranding and
Changing Urban Agendas, Geography Compass, vol. 2, no. 1, 2008, pp. 300–318.
57 Stephen Essex and Brian Chalkley, Olympic Games: Catalyst of Urban Change, Leisure
Studies, vol. 17, no. 3, 1998, p. 196.
58 Peter Rowe, Building Barcelona: A Second Renaixença (Barcelona: Barcelona Regional
and ACTAR, 2006), pp. 101–103.
59 Donald McNeill, Mapping the European Urban Left: The Barcelona Experience, Antipode,
vol. 35, no. 1, January 2003, p. 83.
60 Ibid., p. 84.
61 Oriol Nel×lo, The Olympic Games as a Tool for Urban Renewal: The Experience of
Barcelona’92 Olympic Village (Barcelona: Centre d’Estudis Olímpics UAM, 1997), pp. 5–7.
62 David Cohn, Olympic Village, Architectural Record, vol. 180, August 1992, p. 107.
63 Stefano Bianca, Introduction: A Comprehensive Vision of Urban Rehabilitation, Al-Azhar
Park, Cairo and the Revitalisation of Darb Al-Ahmar: Project Brief, (Aga Khan Trust for
Culture, 2005), p. 10.

231
Notes

64 Hala Nassar, Revolutionary Idea, Landscape Architecture Magazine, vol. 101, no. 4, April
2011, p. 97.
65 Stefano Bianca, Introduction: A Comprehensive Vision of Urban Rehabilitation, Al-Azhar
Park, Cairo and the Revitalisation of Darb Al-Ahmar: Project Brief (Aga Khan Trust for
Culture, 2005).
66 Ibid., p. 10.
67 Hala Nassar, Revolutionary Idea. Landscape Architecture Magazine, vol. 101, no. 4, April
2011, pp. 88–101.
68 Maher Stino cited by Hala Nassar, Revolutionary Idea, Landscape Architecture Magazine,
vol. 101, no. 4, April 2011, p. 101.
69 Ibid.
70 Hugo Massa, Community Approach to Rehabilitation of Historic District, Al Masry Al
Youm, English edition, August 11, 2011, accessed January 11, 2012: [Link].
com/en/node/485515.
71 Francesco Siravo, Reversing the Decline of a Historic District, in Al-Azhar Park, Cairo and
the Revitalisation of Darb Al-Ahmar, edited by AKTC (Geneva: Aga Khan Trust for Culture,
2005), pp. 36–37.
72 Hala Nassar, Revolutionary Idea, Landscape Architecture Magazine, vol. 101, no. 4, April
2011, p. 100.
73 Francesco Siravo, Reversing the Decline of a Historic District, in Al-Azhar Park, Cairo and
the Revitalisation of Darb Al-Ahmar, edited by AKTC (Geneva: Aga Khan Trust for Culture,
2005), pp. 40–41.
74 Cathryn Drake, Spirit of Community: A Mosque in Cairo is Restored for – and by –
Locals. Metropolis, February 2010, accessed [Link]/cda/print_friendly.
php?artid=4154.
75 AKDN [Aga Khan Development Network], The Aga Khan Development Network in Egypt,
brief (Geneva: Aga Khan Development Network, 2010).
76 Ibid.
77 Ibid.
78 Ibid.
79 Ibid.
80 Ibid.
81 Nicolai Ouroussoff, In a Decaying Cairo Quarter, a Vision of Green and Renewal, New
York Times, October 17, 2004: E1, E7. Accessed [Link]
html?res=9D02E7D9123AF93AA25753C1A9629C8B63&pagewanted=print.
82 Hadini Ditmars, A Shock of Green in Concrete Cairo, Globe and Mail,
March 12, 2005, accessed January 11, 2012: [Link]/
life/a-shock-of-green-in-concrete-cairo/article217998/.
83 Hala Nassar, Revolutionary Idea, Landscape Architecture Magazine, vol. 101, no. 4, April
2011, p. 97.
84 AKDN, The Aga Khan Development Network in Egypt, brief (Geneva: Aga Khan
Development Network, 2010).
85 Cathryn Drake, Spirit of Community: A Mosque in Cairo is Restored for – and by –
Locals, Metropolis, February 2010, accessed [Link]/cda/print_friendly.
php?artid=4154.
86 Ibid.
87 Channa Halpern, Del Close, and Kim Johnson, Truth in Comedy: The Manual of
Improvisation (Colorado Springs: Meriweather Publishing Ltd., 1994).
88 Mick Napier, Improvise: Scene from the Inside Out (Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 2004).
89 Keith Sawyer, Group Genius: The Creative Power of Collaboration (New York: Basic
Books, 2008).
90 Matthew Vitug and Brian Kliener, How Can Comedy Be Used in Business?
International Journal of Productivity and Performance Management, vol. 56, no. 2, 2007,
pp. 155–161.

232
 Notes

91 Elizabeth Gerber, Improvisation Principles and Techniques for Design, Computer/Human

Interaction Conference 2007 Proceedings: Learning and Education (New York: Association
for Computing Machinery Press, 2007), pp. 1069–1072.
92 Upright Citizens Brigade, ASSSSCAT! Renegade Improv DVD (Los Angeles, CA: Upright
Citizens Brigade, 2007).
93 Channa Halpern, Del Close, and Kim Johnson, Truth in Comedy: The Manual of
Improvisation (Colorado Springs: Meriweather Publishing Ltd., 1994); and Mick Napier,
Improvise: Scene from the Inside Out (Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 2004).
94 Ibid., p. 37.
95 Ibid., pp. 46–47.
96 Sara Zewde, Reflective Essay: MIT Experimental Design Studio, 2009, accessed January
23, 2010: [Link]
97 Hannah Creeley, Reflective Essay: MIT Experimental Design Studio, 2009, accessed
January 23, 2010: [Link]
98 Sarah Snider, Reflective Essay: MIT Experimental Design Studio, 2009, accessed January
23, 2010: [Link]
99 Catherine Duffy, Reflective Essay: MIT Experimental Design Studio, 2009, accessed
January 23, 2010: [Link]
100 Sarah Snider, Reflective Essay: MIT Experimental Design Studio, 2009, accessed January
23, 2010: [Link]
101 Kathleen Ziegenfuss, Reflective Essay: MIT Experimental Design Studio, 2009, accessed
January 23, 2010: [Link]
102 Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris and Tridib Banerjee, Urban Design Downtown: Poetics and
Politics of Form (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998).
103 Henri Bergson, The Creative Mind (New York: Carol Publishing Group, 1946), p. 131.

4 Beyond Intentions: Consequences of Design

1 Beatriz Plaza, On Some Challenges and Conditions for the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao
to be an Effective Economic Re-activator, International Journal of Urban and Regional
Research, vol. 32, no. 2, June 2008, pp. 506–517.
2 American Institute of Architects, AIA Institute Honor Awards for Regional & Urban
Design: Beijing CBD East Expansion (Washington, DC: American Institute of Architects,
2011), accessed October 7, 2012: [Link]
urban-design/beijing-cbd-east-expansion/[Link] expansion/[Link].
3 Charles Peirce, Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, volumes 1–6, edited by
Charles Hartshorne and Paul Weiss, 1931–1935 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, volume 5, paragraph 9, 1905).
4 Patsy Healey, The Pragmatic Tradition in Planning Thought, Journal of Planning Education
and Research, vol. 28, no. 3, 2009, p. 280.
5 Charles Peirce, The Essential Peirce: Selected Philosphical Writings: Volume 2: 1893–1913
(Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1998), p. 400.
6 Charles Peirce, How to Make Our Ideas Clear, Popular Science Monthly, vol. 12, January
1878, p. 293.
7 John Smith, Community and Reality, in Perspectives on Peirce: Critical Essays on
Charles Sanders Peirce, edited by Richard Bernstein (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press,
1965), p. 113.
8 Elizabeth Cooke, Peirce’s Pragmatic Theory of Inquiry: Fallibilism and Indeterminacy
(London: Continuum, 2006).
9 Arthur Lovejoy, What is the Pragmatistic Theory of Meaning? The First Phase, in Studies
in the Philosophy of Charles Sanders Peirce, edited by Philip Wiener and Frederic Young
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1952), pp. 16–20.

233
Notes

10 Richard Bernstein, interview, New York: Vera List Professor of Philosophy, The New
School, March 20, 2012.
11 William James, Pragmatism (New York: Longmans, Green, 1907), pp. 54–55.
12 Ibid., p. 30.
13 This discussion is derived from Patsy Healey, The Pragmatic Tradition in Planning
Thought, Journal of Planning Education and Research, vol. 28, no. 3, 2009, pp. 279–280.
14 Elizabeth Cooke, Peirce’s Pragmatic Theory of Inquiry: Fallibilism and Indeterminacy
(London: Continuum, 2006).
15 Richard Bernstein, interview, New York: Vera List Professor of Philosophy, The New
School, March 20, 2012.
16 Aseem Inam, From Intentions to Consequences: TOD Design Guidelines and Rio Vista
Project in San Diego (Chicago, IL: Urban Design and Preservation Division, American
Planning Association, 2012).
17 Howard Frumkin, Lawrence Frank, and Richard Jackson, Urban Sprawl and Public Health:
Designing, Planning, and Building for Healthy Communities (Washington, DC: Island
Press, 2004), p. xiv.
18 Laura Jackson, The Relationship of Urban Design to Human Health and Condition,
Landscape and Urban Planning, vol. 64, 2003, pp. 191–200.
19 Douglas Farr, Sustainable Urbanism: Urban Design With Nature (New York: Wiley, 2007).
20 Centre Pompidou, Background (Paris: Official Website of the Centre Pompidou, 2012),
accessed June 20, 2012: [Link]/.
21 Paul Lewis, For Pompidou Centre at 10, The Screams Have Turned to Cheers: The New
York Times, February 17, 1987.
22 Centre Pompidou, Background (Paris: Official Website of the Centre Pompidou, 2012),
accessed June 20, 2012: [Link]/.
23 Andre Fermigier, Le Monde, February 1, 1977, translated from the French by Aseem Inam.
24 Nathan Silver, The Making of Beaubourg: A Building Biography of the Centre Pompidou,
Paris (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1994), p. 1.
25 Judy Fayard, The New Pompidou, The Wall Street Journal, February 3, 2000, p. A24.
26 Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers, Du Plateau Beaubourg au Centre Georges Pompidou:
Renzo Piano, Richard Rogers entretien avec Antoine Picon (Paris: Association de Amis du
Centre Georges Pompidou, 1987).
27 Pompidou Centre set for 2-year Renovation, New York Times, April 8, 1994, retrieved from
[Link]
28 Paul Lewis, For Pompidou Centre at Age 10, the Screams Have Turned to Cheers, New
York Times, February 17, 1987, p. C17.
29 Nathan Silver, The Making of Beaubourg: A Building Biography of the Centre Pompidou,
Paris (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1994), p. 186.
30 Carl Grodach, Museums as Urban Catalysts: The Role of Urban Design in Flagship
Cultural Development, Journal of Urban Design, vol. 13, no. 2, June 2008, pp. 195–196.
31 Stephen Carr, Mark Francis, Leanne Rivlin, and Andrew Stone, Public Space (Press
Syndicate of the University of Cambridge, 1992), p. 113.
32 Jeffrey Chusid, An Innocent Abroad: Joseph Stein in India (New Dehli: India International
Centre Occasional Publication 18, 2010).
33 Massachusetts Department of Transportation – Highway Division, The Central Artery/
Tunnel Project – The Big Dig, accessed January 25, 2010: [Link]/
Highway/bigdig/[Link].
34 The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, America in Gridlock, accessed Janury 25, 2010:
[Link]/wnet/blueprintamerica/reports/america-in-gridlock/video-the-big-dig/5/.
35 William James, Pragmatism (New York: Dover, 1995), p. 22.
36 William James, Collected Essays and Reviews (London: Longmans, Green and Co.,
1920), p. 413.
37 Pete Sigmund, Triumph, Tragedy Mark Boston’s Big Dig Project,
[Link], 2010, accessed February 15, 201:
[Link]/specials/historical/[Link].

234
 Notes

38 Economic Development Research Group, Economic Impacts of the Massachusetts

Turnpike Authority and the Central Artery/Third Harbor Tunnel Project (Boston, MA:
Massachusetts Turnpike Authority, 2006), p. 9.
39 Nicole Gelinas, Lessons of Boston’s Big Dig. City Journal, Autumn 2007, accessed
January 26, 2010: [Link]/html/17_4_big_dig.html.
40 Kayo Tajima, New Estimates of the Demand for Urban Green Space: Implications for
Valuing the Environmental Benefits of Boston’s Big Dig Project, Journal of Urban Affairs,
vol. 25, no. 5, 2003, pp. 652–654.
41 BioCycle, New Park Grows from Big Dig and Compost, BioCycle, vol. 43, no. 8, August
2002, p. 19.
42 Paul Goldberger, Salvage Artists, The New Yorker, March 19,
2007, accessed June 19, 2010: [Link]/arts/critics/
skyline/2007/03/19/070319crsk_skyline_goldberger?printable=true.
43 Mass DOT Highway Division, The Central Artery/Tunnel Project – The Big Dig – Tunnels
and Bridges (Boston, MA, 2011), accessed January 28, 2011: [Link]/
Highway/bigdig/tunnels_bridges.aspx.
44 Rosalind Williams, The Big Dig, Technology and Culture, vol. 47, no. 3, July 2006, p. 708.
45 Brendan Patrick Hughes, Boston: City Study, Next American City, March 4, 2010, p. 28.
46 J. Meejin Yoon and Meredith Miller, Public Works: Unsolicited Small Projects for the Big
Dig (Hong Kong: Map Book Publishers, 2008), p. 10.

5 Beyond Practice: Urbanism as Creative

Political Act
1 Privatism is the view that society is organized around the individual pursuit of wealth,
and that the role of government is limited to establishing coordinated frameworks
among individual wealth-seekers and to ideally ensure a setting where all individuals
and enterprises can pursue wealth creation. See Sam Bass Warner, The Private City:
Philadelphia in Three Periods of Its Growth, 2nd edn (Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania Press, 1987).
2 Richard Rorty, Philosophy and Social Hope (London: Penguin Books, 1999),
pp. xxvii–xxix.
3 Richard Rorty, cited by Peter Reason, Action Research, vol. 1, no. 1, 2003, p. 114.
4 Richard Rorty, Philosophy and Social Hope (London: Penguin Books, 1999), p. xxix.
5 Ibid., p. 85.
6 Sharon Zukin, Landscapes of Power: From Detroit to Disney World (Berkeley, CA:
California University Press, 1991), p. 39.
7 Ibid.
8 Murray Edelman, From Art to Politics: How Artistic Creations Shape Political Conceptions
(Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1995), p. 74.
9 David Harvey, Spaces of Hope (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2000), p. 157.
10 Ibid., p. 164.
11 John Logan and Harvey Molotch, Urban Fortunes: The Political Economy of Place
(Berkeley, CA: University California Press, 1987), pp. 1–16.
12 Harvey Molotch, The City as a Growth Machine: Toward a Political Economy of Place,
American Journal of Sociology, vol. 82, no. 2, September 1976, p. 309.
13 Eric Hobsbawm, Introduction: Inventing Traditions, in The Invention of Tradition, edited
by Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983),
pp. 1–2.
14 Richard Rorty, Is Philosophy Relevant to Allied Ethics? Business Ethics Quarterly, vol. 16,
no. 3, July 2006, p. 373.

235
Notes

15 Aseem Inam, Senior Project Manager, Moule & Polyzoides Architects and Urbanists,
email message, May 24, 2006.
16 Steve Helvey, City Manager, Whittier, cited by Aseem Inam, email message, February 19,
2008.
17 Steve Helvey, City Manager, Whittier, email message, November 20, 2007.
18 Steve Helvey, City Manager, Whittier, email message, December 1, 2006.
19 Jeffrey Tumlin, Parking, in Form Based Codes: A Guide for Planners, Urban Designers,
Municipalities, and Developers, edited by Daniel Parolek, Karen Parolek, and Paul
Crawford (New York: Wiley, 2008), p. 50.
20 Aseem Inam, Moule & Polyzoides: Responses to Agenda Items: Uptown Whittier
Specific Plan: Planning Commission Study Sessions (Pasadena, CA: Moule & Polyzoides
Architects and Urbanists, July 30, 2007), pp. 9–10.
21 Moule & Polyzoides, Uptown Whittier Specific Plan (Pasadena, CA: Moule & Polyzoides
Architects and Urbanists for the City of Whittier, adopted by the City Council on
November 8, 2008), p. 3:5.
22 Ibid., p. 2:24.
23 Ibid.
24 Ibid., p. 2:7.
25 Ibid., p. 2:23.
26 Lester Salomon, ed., The Tools of Government: A Guide to the New Governance (New
York: Oxford University Press, 2002), pp. 32–34.
27 Martha Chen, The Informal Economy: Definitions, Theories and Policies, WIEGO Working
Paper No. 1 (Cambridge, MA: Women in Informal Employment: Globalizing and
Organizing, August 2012), p. 2.
28 Ibid., p. 4.
29 UN Habitat, The Challenge of Slums: Global Report on Human Settlements 2003
(London: United Nations Human Settlements Programme and Earthscan, 2003), p. xxvi.
30 Ibid., p. 10.
31 Ibid., p. 11.
32 Mike Davis, Planet of Slums (London: Verso, 2006), p. 19.
33 Ibid., pp. 17–18.
34 Leonardo Avritzer, Living Under a Democracy: Participation and Its Impact on the Living
Conditions of the Poor, Latin American Research Review, vol. 45, special issue, 2010,
p. 171.
35 Ibid., pp. 172–177.
36 Fernando Lara, Beyond Curitiba: The Rise of a Participatory Model for Urban Intervention
in Brazil, Urban Design International, vol. 15, no. 2, 2010, p. 122.
37 Jessica Bremner and Caroline Park, Shifting Power: The Importance of Funding
Community Participation, report (Los Angeles, and Boston, MA: University of California:
Affordable Housing Institute, 2010b), p. 37.
38 Belo Horizonte, Prefeitura Municipal de Belo Horizonte, Participatory Budgeting in Belo
Horizonte: Fifteen Years 1993–2008, report (Belo Horizonte, Brazil: Prefeitura Municipal
de Belo Horizonte, 2009), pp. 31–33.
39 Fernando Lara, Beyond Curitiba: The Rise of a Participatory Model for Urban Intervention
in Brazil, Urban Design International, vol. 15, no. 2, 2010, p. 124.
40 Fernando Lara, Beyond Curitiba: The Rise of a Participatory Model for Urban
Intervention in Brazil, Urban Design International, vol. 15, no. 2, 2010, p. 123; and Jessica
Bremner and Caroline Park, Shifting Power: The Importance of Funding Community
Participation, report (Los Angeles, and Boston, MA: University of California: Affordable
Housing Institute, 2010b), pp. 39–40.
41 Jessica Bremner and Caroline Park, Shifting Power: Scaling-Up Self-Management,
paper (Los Angeles, CA: University of California, 2010a), pp. 2–5; and João
Filho and Jorge Ávila, Urbanização da Pobreza e Regularização de Favelas em Belo
Horizonte, Anais do XIII Seminário sobre a Economia Mineira CEDEPLAR: Belo

236
 Notes

Horizonte, 2008, Folha, 2009, accessed April 27, 2010: [Link]/folha/

dinheiro/[Link].
42 Jessica Bremner and Caroline Park, Shifting Power: Scaling-Up Self-Management,
paper (Los Angeles, CA: University of California, 2010a), pp. 8–9.
43 CAIXA, History (Brasilia: Caixa Econômica Federal, 2006), accessed March 15, 2013:
[Link]/idiomas/ingles/[Link].
44 Jessica Bremner and Caroline Park, Shifting Power: Scaling-Up Self-Management,
paper (Los Angeles, CA: University of California, 2010a), pp. 8–9.
45 Ibid., pp. 9–10.
46 Ibid., p. 11.
47 Fernando Lara, Beyond Curitiba: The Rise of a Participatory Model for Urban
Intervention in Brazil, Urban Design International, vol. 15, no. 2, 2010, p. 125; Belo
Horizonte, Prefeitura Municipal de, Vila Viva Program, presentation, Belo Horizonte:
2012 World Congress of the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives
(ICLEI), 2012; and Junia Naves Nogueira, Director of the Division for Funding,
personal communication, URBEL – Companhia Urbanizadora e de Habitação de Belo
Horizonte, July 24, 2012.
48 Jessica Bremner and Caroline Park, Shifting Power: The Importance of Funding
Community Participation, report (Los Angeles, and Boston, MA: University of California:
Affordable Housing Institute, 2010b), p. 45.
49 Belo Horizonte, Prefeitura Municipal de, Vila Viva Program, presentation, Belo Horizonte:
2012 World Congress of the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives
(ICLEI), 2012.
50 Fernando Lara, Beyond Curitiba: The Rise of a Participatory Model for Urban Intervention
in Brazil, Urban Design International, vol. 15, no. 2, 2010, p. 126.
51 Jessica Bremner and Caroline Park, Shifting Power: Scaling-Up Self-Management,
paper (Los Angeles CA: University of California, 2010a), pp. 11–12.
52 Carlos Texeira, Vila Viva Favela Redesign: Part 3, Principal, Vazio S/A Arquitetura e
Urbanismo, Belo Horizonte, presentation, Design and Urban Practice Colloquium Lecture
Series, Parsons The New School for Design, New York, November 2, 2011.
53 Belo Horizonte, Prefeitura Municipal de, Participatory Budgeting in Belo Horizonte:
Fifteen Years 1993–2008, report (Belo Horizonte, Brazil: Prefeitura Municipal de Belo
Horizonte, 2009), p. 5.
54 Terence Wood and Warwick Murray, Participatory Democracy in Brazil and Local
Geographies: Porto Alegre and Belo Horizonte Compared, European Review of Latin
American and Caribbean Studies, no. 83, October 2007, pp. 19–41.
55 Ibid.
56 Arif Hasan and Masooma Mohib, The Case of Karachi, Pakistan, Understanding
Slums: Case Studies for the Global Report on Human Settlements (UN-Habitat, 2003),
p. 14.
57 Perween Rahman, Orangi Pilot Project – Institutions and Programs, memorandum
(Karachi: Orangi Pilot Project – Research & Training Institute, March 2010), p. 1.
58 Arif Hasan and Masooma Mohib, The Case of Karachi, Pakistan, Understanding Slums:
Case Studies for the Global Report on Human Settlements (UN-Habitat, 2003), p. 15.
59 Orangi Pilot Project – Research & Training Institute, September 2011, accessed February
25, 2013: [Link]/.
60 Ashad Hasim, Karachi’s Killing Fields, September 6, 2012, Aljazeera, accessed February
25, 2013: [Link]/indepth/interactive/2012/08/[Link]; and
Q&A: Ethnicity, Land, and Violence in Karachi, June 19, 2012, accessed February 25, 2013:
[Link]/indepth/features/2012/06/[Link].
61 Ibid., p. 162.
62 Mir Anjum Altaf, Aly Ercelawn, Kaiser Bengali, and Abdul Rahim, Poverty in Karachi:
Incidence, Location, Characteristics and Upward Mobility, Pakistan Development Review,
vol. 32, no. 2, 1993, p. 169.

237
Notes

63 Arif Hasan, Orangi Pilot Project: The Expansion of Work Beyond Orangi and the Mapping
of Informal Settlements and Infrastructure, Environment and Urbanization, vol. 18, no. 2,
2006, pp. 451–480.
64 Anna Petherick, Q&A Arif Hasan: Architect of Change, Nature, vol. 486, June 14, 2012,
p. 190.
65 Akhtar Badshah, Our Urban Future: New Paradigms for Equity and Sustainability
(London: Zed Books Ltd., 1996), p. 45.
66 Arif Hasan, Asiya Sadiq, and Salim Alimuddin, Working with Communities (Karachi: City
Press, 2001).
67 Akhtar Badshah, Our Urban Future: New Paradigms for Equity and Sustainability
(London: Zed Books Ltd., 1996), p. 45.
68 Jeremy Grant, The Orangi Pilot Project: Private Money, Public Interest, The Financial
Times, August 12, 1997
69 Arif Hasan, Asiya Sadiq, and Salim Alimuddin, Working with Communities (Karachi: City
Press, 2001).
70 Perween Rahman, Orangi Pilot Project – Institutions and Programs, memorandum
(Karachi: Orangi Pilot Project – Research & Training Institute, March 2010), pp. 2–3.
71 Akbar Zaidi, From Lane to the City: The Impact of The Orangi Pilot Project’s Low Cost
Sanitation Model, in WaterAid Report 2001, edited by Eric Gutierrez and Virginia Roaf,
June 2001.
72 Arif Hasan, Orangi Pilot Project: The Expansion of Work Beyond Orangi and the Mapping
of Informal Settlements and Infrastructure, Environment and Urbanization, vol. 18, no. 2,
2006, pp. 454–455.
73 Perween Rahman, Orangi Pilot Project – Institutions and Programs, memorandum
(Karachi: Orangi Pilot Project – Research & Training Institute, March 2010), p. 3.
74 Orangi Pilot Project – Research and Training Institute, Low Cost Housing Programme,
accessed February 25, 2013: [Link]/Housing%[Link].
75 Orangi Pilot Project – Research and Training Institute, 127th Quarterly Report (Karachi:
Orangi Pilot Project – Research & Training Institute, September 2011), pp. 54–56.
76 Perween Rahman, Orangi Pilot Project – Institutions and Programs, memorandum
(Karachi: Orangi Pilot Project – Research & Training Institute, March 2010), p. 3.
77 Anna Petherick, Q&A Arif Hasan: Architect of Change, Nature, vol. 486, June 14, 2012,
p. 190.
78 Perween Rahman, Orangi Pilot Project – Institutions and Programs, memorandum
(Karachi: Orangi Pilot Project – Research & Training Institute, March 2010), p. 4.
79 Anna Petherick, Q&A Arif Hasan: Architect of Change, Nature, vol. 486, June 14, 2012,
p. 190.
80 Perween Rahman, Orangi Pilot Project (OPP) – Institutions and Programs,
memorandum (Karachi: Orangi Pilot Project – Research & Training Institute, March 2010),
p. 4.
81 Orangi Pilot Project – Research and Training Institute, 127th Quarterly Report (Karachi:
Orangi Pilot Project – Research & Training Institute, September 2011), pp. 90–91.
82 Akhtar Hameed Khan, Orangi Pilot Project: Reminiscences and Reflections (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1996), pp. 88–90.
83 Ibid.
84 Orangi Pilot Project – Research and Training Institute, 127th Quarterly Report (Karachi:
Orangi Pilot Project – Research & Training Institute, September 2011), pp. 51–53.
85 Steve Inskeep, Female Workers Break Stereotypes in Karachi, National Public
Radio Morning Edition, June 5, 2008, accessed March 18, 2013: [Link].
org/2008/06/05/91181163/female-workers-break-stereotypes-in-karachi.
86 Akbar Zaidi, From Lane to the City: The Impact of The Orangi Pilot Project’s Low Cost
Sanitation Model, report (London: WaterAid, June 2001).
87 Akhtar Badshah, Our Urban Future: New Paradigms for Equity and Sustainability
(London: Zed Books Ltd, 1996), p. 60.

238
 Notes

88 Perween Rahman and Anwar Rashid, Orangi Pilot Project – Institutions and Programs,
memorandum (Karachi: Orangi Pilot Project – Research & Training Institute, September
2006).
89 Mark Belcher, Modern Revolutions and The Study of Revolutions, The Journal of Modern
History, vol. 47, no. 3, September 1975, pp. 545–546, emphasis added.
90 Richard Rorty, Is Philosophy Relevant to Allied Ethics? Business Ethics Quarterly, vol. 16,
no. 3, July 2006, p. 372.

6 Transformations: Urbanism as Transformation

1 Richard Rorty, Philosophy and Social Hope (New York: Penguin Books, 1999), page xxv.
2 Louis Menand, An Introduction to Pragmatism, in Pragmatism: A Reader, edited by Louis
Menand (New York: Vintage Books, 1997), pp. xiii–xiv.
3 Stephen Wheeler, The Evolution of Built Landscapes of Metropolitan Regions, Journal of
Planning Education and Research, vol. 27, no. 4, 2008, pp. 400–416.
4 David Thorns, The Transformation of Cities: Urban Theory and Urban Life (New York:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), pp. 3–4.
5 Josef Gugler, The Urban Transformation of the Developing World (London: Oxford
University Press, 1996), p. xvii.
6 Robert Marans, Quality of Life Studies: An Overview and Implications for Environment-
Behaviour Research, Procedia: Social and Behavioral Sciences, vol. 35, 2012: pp. 9–22.
7 Economist Intelligence Unit, A Summary of the Liveability Ranking and Overview:
August 2011, report (London: Economist Intelligence Unit, 2011).
8 Kevin Lynch, Good City Form (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1981), p. 111.
9 Ibid., p. 5.
10 Peter Bosselmann, Urban Transformation: Understanding City Form, and Design
(Washington, DC: Island Press, 2008), pp. 195–196.
11 There are many urban scholars, especially those who emerge out of architectural
traditions, who persist with such superficial forms of analysis. For example, see
Pier Vittorio Aureli, City as Political Form: Four Archetypes of Urban Transformation,
Architectural Design, vol. 81, no. 1, January–February 2011, pp. 32–37.
12 Raymond Pfeiffer, An Introduction to Classic American Pragmatism, Philosophy
Now, July 2012, accessed September 14, 2012: [Link]
An_Introduction_to_Classic_American_Pragmatism.
13 Richard Rorty cited by Kai Nielsen, in A Companion to Pragmatism, edited by John
Shook and Joseph Margolis (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009), pp. 127–138.
14 Richard Rorty, Is Philosophy Relevant to Applied Ethics? Business Ethics Quarterly, vol.
16, no. 3, 2006, pp. 369–380.
15 Robert Westbrook, John Dewey and American Democracy (New York: Cornell University
Press, 1991), page xv.
16 John Dewey, The Ethics of Democracy (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Philosophical
Papers, 1888), p. 247.
17 Eric MacGilvray, Experience as Experiment: Some Consequences of Pragmatism for
Democratic Theory, American Journal of Political Science, vol. 43, no. 2, April 1999,
p. 545.
18 Louis Menand, An Introduction to Pragmatism, in Pragmatism: A Reader, edited by Louis
Menand (New York: Vintage Books, 1997), p. xxxiv.
19 Vinayak Bharne and Aseem Inam, Engaging the Asian City, in The Emerging Asian
City: Concomitant Urbanities and Urbanisms, edited by Vinayak Bharne (Abingdon:
Routledge, 2013), p. 266.
20 James MacGregor Burns, Leadership (New York: Harper, 1978), p. 4.

239
Notes

21 Dennis Dalton, Mahatma Gandhi: Nonviolent Power in Action (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1993), p. 31.
22 Martin Luther King Jr., Speech, New York: Riverside Church, April 4, 1967.
23 King Research and Education Institute, “Martin Luther King Jr. and the Global Freedom
Struggle: Memphis Sanitation Worker’s Strike (1968)” (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford
University), accessed April 9, 2013: [Link]
encyclopedia/enc_memphis_sanitation_workers_strike_1968/.

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Index
Al-Azhar Park 109–11, 210–11, 81–93; Aga Central Artery/Tunnel Project and MIT
Khan Trust for Culture; socio-economic Experimental Design Studio
development 90–2; Museum of Historic Burnham and Bennett’s Plan for Chicago
Cairo 87; temporal processes 85–9; 62–3
landscape architecture; Egypt 82–5;
evolution and adaptability of design Cairo, Egypt 110; Ayyubid Wall 89, 92;
process 82–5; Al; Darassa 83; Maher Stino Darb-Al Amar 91–2; see also Al-Azhar
and Laila El-Masry Stino 81; Al-Azhar Park
Mosque 81 Central Artery/Tunnel Project 119–20, 139–55,
Alexander, Christopher 17, 65–6 219; transportation infrastructure 140–1;
American Institute of Architects ix, 113 elevated highway 144; Zakim Bridge 145,
American Planning Association 118, 175 152–3; Rose Kennedy Greenway 149, Big
automobile culture 168, 206 Dig House 149–51; public works 151, 191;
Massachusetts Turnpike Authority 146–7
Barcelona, Spain 31, 67–81, 109; Barcelona Centre Pompidou 30, 119–32, 155–6, 219;
Metro expansion 79; Mayor Narcis Serra architectural object and urban materiality
79; democratic municipal management 121–24; accidental urbanism 125–30; from
79; General Metropolitan Plan 78; 1888 object to urbanity 131–2
World’s Fair 67, 78; see also Olympic city x, 1, 3–4, 6–7, 9–10, 14–15, 19–22, 26–7,
Village 38, 41–2, 60–6, 77, 219–20; material city
Barnett, Jonathan 8–9 1, 4–6, 8–9, 12–16, 21, 26–7, 62–6, 80–1,
Belo Horizonte, Brazil 180–4; see also Parque 105, 116–17, 119, 127, 133, 139, 158, 161–2,
Da Terceira Agua 169–70, 173–4, 176, 192, 207, 212, 214–15;
Bergson, Henri 111 political economy and the city 24–5,
Big Dig see Central Artery/Tunnel Project 157–8, 162, 218
Bosselman, Peter 215 city-design-and-building processes x, 2,
Boston, United States 9, 15, 30–1, 60, 212; 14–15, 104, 139, 158, 220
Chinatown 102–3; South End 102–3; Companion to Urban Design 10–11
North End 146; Charles River 143, 145; courtyards 17, 51, 56, 69, 71, 133–6 190–1
Ted Williams Tunnel 145; Spectacle Island creativity in the design process 162
Park 146; South Boston 147; see also culture and the arts 130, 139

247
Index

Cuthbert, Alexander 24 Le Corbusier 112, 119

local politics 174, 206
democracy 5, 19, 22, 28, 38, 40–1, 79, 106–7, Los Angeles, United States 16, 207; see also
158–9, 161, 180–84, 192–3, 207, 216–17 Uptown Whittier Specific Plan
design vii-viii, x, 2, 3, 6, 9, 11–12, 15, 17–31, Lovejoy, Arthur 116
38, 41–3, 49, 51–3, 57–9, 60–1, 63, 65, 67, Lynch, Kevin 22–4, 105, 214; humanist values
77–91, 93, 96–109, 112, 118–19, 133–35, 22
138–39, 142, 154–56, 159–77, 192–93,
206–8, 210–11, 217–19; power and design MacArthur Foundation 134
4; see also urban design materiality of architecture 137
Detroit 210–11 microfinance 89–90, 92, 201–4
Dewey, John 32–4, 38–41, 209–10, 217; see MIT Experimental Design Studio 92–111, 219;
also Pragmatism comedy improvisation 28–9, 93–5, 99–102;
activity map 106; tyranny of novelty
economic development 22, 31, 90–2, 129, 104; design studio pedagogy 102–4,
146, 163–4, 185 210–11; spontaneity and design process
education programs 55–6, 90, 123, 170, 100–2; creative collaboration 95–8; team
179–80, 183–4, 200–6, 213–14 dynamics 96
mixed-use 118–19, 138
Forsyth, Ann 12 Moudon, Anne 9–10
Moule & Polyzoides Architects and
Gandhi, Mahatma 221–3; Indian Urbanists 163–4, 167, 171, 175; see also
independence movement 220 Uptown Whittier Specific Plan
Gehry, Frank 72, 112, 130, 210
Good City Form 22–4, 105, 214 natural landscape 133
Guggenheim 112–13 New Delhi, India 133–4; see also India
Gujarat, India 29, 43–59; see also Rural Habitat Centre
Habitat Development Programme New York City 11, 117, 177–8
New Urbanism 8–9, 13, 20; endnotes 224,
Harvey, David 63–4, 66, 160–1 226.
Nonviolence 220–2
Inam, Aseem: image captions 44, 45, 47, 50,
51, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 94, 121, 122, 123, Olympic Village 60, 67–81, 109–11, 219;
124, 127, 142, 148, 149, 152, 167, 168, 178, Mayor Pasqual Maragall 80; 1992 Olympic
188, 189, 190, 191; endnotes 224, 225, 228, Games 67, 78–9; Long-term investments
234, 236; additional references 243 in the city as flux 79–81; Barcelona’s 1986
India Habitat Centre 132–39, 219; Housing nomination to host the Olympic Games
and Urban Development Corporation 80; economic crisis 80; Oriol Bohigas
of India 132–4; redesigning institutions 79; Olympic Village as a Hundred-Year
and cities 134–8; government building as Process 77–9; beaches 74; infrastructural
public space 138–9; cultural activities 139 investment 74; Olympic Village open
spaces 71–2; apartment buildings 71;
James, William 33, 61, 116, 142–3; see also Paralympics 70; plan for Olympic Village
Pragmatism 69; Poblenou 67–8; athlete housing 68
Journal of Urban Design 11–12 Orangi Pilot Project 193–206; contextualizing
transformation 193–4, collaborative design
Karachi, Pakistan 193–4, 179–80; katchi abadi 195–204, creative political acts 204–6
180; see also Orangi Pilot Project
Kelbaugh, Douglas 12–13; Writing Urbanism: Paris, France 15, 30, 48, 62, 119, 120–31;
A Design Reader 10 Stravinsky Fountain 128–9; Beaubourg
King, Martin Luther Jr. 219–23; Montgomery 125; Haussmann’s Paris 62–4; see also
bus boycott 220–1; Memphis march 222 Centre Pompidou
Kostof, Spiro 62–5 Parque Da Terceira Agua 177–93, 218:
Krieger, Alex 9 informal settlements 176–9; Plano Global

248
 Index

Especifico (PGE) 183–4; Villa Viva program Shane, Grahame 14–16

184–5; Global Specific Plan see Plano Skidmore Owings and Merrill 113
Global Especifico sprawl 15–16, 118–19, 168
Parsons The New School for Design x, 11; Stein, Joseph 132–3
endnotes 225, 237 sustainable design 154
participatory budgeting 180–4, 191–2
pedagogy 1–2, 93, 102–11, 209; see also MIT The Economist 213–14
Experimental Design Studio tourism 75–6, 80, 91, 123–4
Peirce, Charles 32–4, 41, 114–117, 154–5; transformation viii, 2, 4, 18–19, 25, 28–31,
the “Pragmatic maxim” 34; see also 49, 59, 63, 65, 68, 78, 90–1, 111, 119–20,
Pragmatism 125–6, 155–6, 164, 175, 193, 209, 211–13,
power and design 114, 157, 160 216–23; transforming leadership 221; see
Pragmatism 28–59, 61–7, 114–17, 156, 159–63, urban transformation
208–11, 215–18; modern institutions
33; anti-foundationalism 35–6; social United Nations 179; UN Human Settlements
character of knowledge 36–7; contingency Programme 17–18
37–8; experimentation 38; pluralism Uptown Whittier Specific Plan 16, 164–77,
39–40; pragmatism and urbanism 40–2; 207, 218: parking and transformative
Pragmatism as worldview 114–15 urbanism 168–74; multidisciplinary project
public space 6–8, 17, 27–8, 69, 71–2, 74–6, team 171, 175; political constituency for
78–80, 93, 120, 122, 126–9, 131, 135, 142, urbanism 165–8, 175
192, 207, 211–12, 219 urban design 1–31, 60–5, 95, 104–5, 110, 113,
158, 160–1, 206; design and urban form
qualitative assessment of cities 25, 148, 214 26; see design
quality-of-life indicators 213–14 urban population growth 3–4, 212–13
urban transformation 11, 16–17, 31, 42,
rent stabilization 117 66–7, 109, 131–32, 154, 157, 180, 208, 209,
Rorty, Richard 36, 38, 159–63, 209, 216: see 210–20
also Pragmatism urbanism vii–viii; definitions and
Rural Habitat Development Programme significance 1–6; “best practices” 6, 16–19;
28–9, 42–59, 210–11; Aga Khan Plan theory and practice 19–25; long-term
and Building Service 42–59; Aga Khan strategy and commitment 45–6, 52, 65–6,
Development Network 43; Rural Habitat 79–81, 91, 93, 105–6, 173–4, 219–22;
Development Program 42–59; field activism 27–8, 220; specialization 139;
research 47–9; participating in local journalism and urbanism 112; professional
culture 46–7; panchayat 48–9; local practice 12–13, 26, 103, 108–9, 157
materials 45, 49–50; affordable housing
49–53; disaster recovery 53–6 Wirth, Louis 21–2
women’s empowerment 58, 90, 193, 201–4
San Diego 118
sanitation infrastructure 43–4, 194–7 Zukin, Sharon 24–5, 159–60

249