19th Century Cities
It's been argued that rail is a "19th century technology" out of place in 21st century cities. While I find this argument absurd on its face (walking and bicycling are also "old technologies," but still quite useful), it may not even make sense on its own absurd terms.
Consider this article in The New Republic on how big American cities like Chicago are looking more and more like 19th century Paris and Vienna:
What would a post-inversion American city look like? In the most extreme scenario, it would look like many of the European capitals of the 1890s. Take Vienna, for example. In the mid-nineteenth century, the medieval wall that had surrounded the city's central core for hundreds of years was torn down. In its place there appeared the Ringstrasse, the circle of fashionable boulevards where opera was sung and plays performed, where rich merchants and minor noblemen lived in spacious apartments, where gentlemen and ladies promenaded in the evening under the gaslights, where Freud, Mahler, and their friends held long conversations about death over coffee and pastry in sidewalk cafes. By contrast, if you were part of the servant class, odds were you lived far beyond the center, in a neighborhood called Ottakring, a concentration of more than 30, 000 cramped one- and two-bedroom apartments, whose residents--largely immigrant Czechs, Slovaks, and Slovenes--endured a long horse-car ride to get to work in the heart of the city.
I do believe that, in a large sense, many people who are leaving Seattle's "inner city" (i.e. the Central District and the Rainier Valley) to move out to, say, Renton, Tukwila, or Federal Way are moving up, and doing so intentionally and in search of a better life.
By way of comparison, 100 years ago, Seattle's Jewish community was centered around 14th and Yesler (IIRC, the Langston Hughes Arts Center at 17th and Yesler was originally built as a synagogue). Over time, that community left the Central District and moved South and East towards Seward Park and Mercer Island. Today's Vietnamese and African-American communities are treading much the same path.
But, of course, the big difference here is $4/gallon gas. "Moving on out" doesn't have quite the same appeal. So, we have to be creative about giving people the opportunity to live the American dream, while at the same time making sure no one gets "stranded in suburbia."
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In the urban planners community, the construction of the "20th century city" has become a sort of religion, whose Ten Commandments was the Athens Charter by Le Corbusier. From 1945 to 1990, all the efforts of the urban planning community were made to follow the athens charter as strictly as possible, without any doubt wheter it was adapted to the exigences of the city.
The "trains are a 19th century technology" debate seems to derive from the same way of thinking: there is no debate over the needs of the city, just on what is modern ad what is not.
http://downtowncreator.wordpress.com
When I read:
I started to think about what old structures in this area could be torn down and replaced with "fashionable boulevards". For a second, the viaduct popped into my mind, but then I realized that the ability to enjoy the waterfront is just another of those "19th century technologies", like trains and streetcars, that we are better off without.
I found that TNR article fascinating, too. I wonder if urban planning, like so many human institutions, suffers from the mentality of having a vision and then stubbornly holding to the vision regardless of the changing dynamics that take place within the culture. Keep the great observations coming, this is a great blog.
doc,
thanks for the comments. I think there's definitely some sclerosis in urban planning, but overall the cities we build are often a reflection of our collective priorities. We get the cities we want (or maybe the cities we deserve). We've been building auto-centric, class-stratified cities for so long, this is what we end up with.