METAPHYSICAL URBANISM: ALL ABOUT DESIGN

By: Jaime Correa

Design must permeate every corner of the planet without focused discrimination. This lack of ideological favoritism will generate a new breed of urban design professionals confronted with the spatial representation of situations which did not exist one generation ago. Projects must become instruments for the enfoldment of new urban realities; projects must act as ecological agents for the transformation of social, cultural, economic, and political conditions. Urban design projects may even become a metaphysical expression of ulterior realities and difficult iconography.  Projects must acquire a less pragmatic vision of the world and must engage the mytho-poetic dimension in a more direct manner. 

Within such a strategy of project innovation, sites need to be re-invented, reclaimed from obsolescence and degradation, colonized, re-evaluated, re-programmed, artificially constructed, re-scaled, thickened, folded, changed, warped, rotated, multiplied, moved and, simultaneously, reconstituted within the particular culture of its location; a condition described by Alex Wall as, “a spatial inclination to the understanding of the urban surface as a dynamic agricultural field … assuming different functions, geometries, distributive arrangements, and appearances as changing circumstances demand”. [1]

Once again, the scale of urban design projects will either recover its colossal dimension or involve society at the everyday level (at the level of public place). This article will dismiss the everyday dimension for a moment while focusing on the colossal, formal, and top-down strategies of three design projects: the construction and design of the Pyramid of Giza in Egypt, the planning of Central Park in New York, and the proposal of a world-wide architectural Viaduct by the Italian firm Superstudio. 

Spatial metaphysics:

Until c.1300, the largest of the three pyramids in the Giza necropolis was the tallest building on the face of the earth -a monumental structure which was meant to have iconographic values beyond those of its local culture or setting. 

Its square base was carefully aligned with the four cardinal points on its true north (not its magnetic north); the ratio of its perimeter to its height (1760/280 cubits) is approximately equivalent to 2π to an accuracy of better than 0.05% (corresponding to the well-known approximation of π as 22/7). On both its vertical and horizontal axis, it presents proportions that are similar to those of the entire planet; its total number of stones describes, with the highest precision, the perimeter of the earth; its King’s chamber is still a matter of metaphysical speculation due to the accuracy of its construction –from one single piece of granite and in the absence of laser cutters. From its magnificent sitting one can deduct that, the Pyramid of Giza lies in the center of gravity of the continents. It also lies in the exact center of all the land area of the world, dividing the earth’s mass into approximately equal quarters. The north-south axis (31 degrees east of Greenwich) is the longest land meridian, and the east-west axis (30 degrees north) is the longest land parallel on the globe. 

The project of the great Pyramid of Giza is a repository of universal standards; it is a model of the earth against which any measurement could be confirmed and corrected, if necessary. It is exactly the imperishable standard, which the French had sought, but infinitely more practical and intelligent.  From classical times, the Great pyramid has been acknowledged as having mathematical, meteorologic and geodetic functions. Yet, the Pyramid of Giza is not only about the representation of ulterior realities but also about beauty and functionality; at the end of the day, the Pyramid of Giza is nothing but the pharaoh’s tomb in the Egyptian version of an existing necropolis. 

In the middle of nowhere: 

The City of New York’s Central Park project may serve to illuminate the overarching values of the ideas here proposed. It also demonstrates the potential political milieu necessary for implementation as well as the metaphysical consciousness required for the assessment of their real estate significance. 

As the first landscaped public park in the United States, its construction was not the result of political motivation or administrative requests but, the result of the free-will and imagination of a group of wealthy merchants and landowners –who admired the park grounds of London, Paris, and Berlin and who pressed themselves to attain comparable internationally known facilities within the urban territory of New York City: “A public park, they argued, would offer their own families an attractive setting for carriage rides and provide working-class New Yorkers with a healthy alternative to the saloon”.[2] It took more than three years of debate over the park site and its cost but, in 1853, the State Legislature passed a resolution authorizing the City of New York to use its power of eminent domain to acquire about 700 acres of land in a remote area of Manhattan –area which was expanded, in 1863, to its current 843 acres. 

A dangerous terrain of bluffs and swamps served to manifest, what at the time was considered to be, a most irrational idea. Building the park required the displacement of more than 1600 poor residents living in small shanties as well as the destruction of one of the most stable African-American neighborhoods in the city. The extents of the park covered three city blocks from east to west and about fifty blocks in length from north to south. By 1857, the newly independently appointed Central Park Commission held the country’s first landscape design competition and selected the so-called “Greensward Plan” by Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux. Their proposal was basically a pastoral landscape in the English romantic tradition: open Rolling Meadows contrasting with the picturesque effects of the Rambla and the more formal areas of the Mall Promenade and the grounds of the Bethesda Terrace. As part of their imaginative approach, Olmsted and Vaux sank four roads about eight feet below the park’s surface to carry cross-town traffic –which did not even exist at the time of their proposal, and separated carriage drives, pedestrian walks, and equestrian paths with the help of Jacob Mould – an engineer who designed more than forty bridges to eliminate grade crossings between the different routes. 

The building of Central Park was the most important work of infrastructure at the end of the nineteenth century. By 1859, the park opened its doors to recognize the involvement of more than 20,000 workers, the removal and movement of about 3 million cubic yards of soil, the planting of 270,000 trees and shrubs, and the creation of artificial lakes and giant water reservoirs.

By 1865 those wealthy citizens, who captured the initial idea in their minds, joined more than seven million people on their daily late-afternoon carriage and bicycle rides, their winter skating and summer concerts, their meadow picnics, and their experience of a space like no other in the world. The Central Park idea was severely opposed by pragmatists and unimaginative politicians who, under the existing conditions, could only see its negative aspects and implementation difficulties. Had the original idea, its colossal dimensions, its location in the middle of nowhere, or its ambiguous programming be compromised, the park as we know it would have never existed. More importantly, Central Park proves that an imaginative, yet clear and concise infrastructural idea, can generate millions of dollars in tax revenue, produce thousands of jobs, breed unexpected design solutions, and engender amenities which result in increased real estate values within and without. 

The iconography of colossal interventions: 

A third project by the Italian group Superstudio can attest to the power of ambitious ideas.[3] As a result of a competition dedicated to “Architettura e Liberta”, promoted in 1969 at the Graz Biennale, a proposal for a large-scale project captured the public’s imagination with its powerful images of some sort of metaphysical landscape. 

Their viaduct of architecture (Viadotto d’Architettura) was a linear monumental structure which would traverse the earth’s diameter in the form of a tri-dimensional gridded edifice. As a continuous monument (Monumento Continuo), this building line would cross over some of the most important global landmarks and would leave its minimalist imprints on every site on its path. Their carefully crafted photo montages of a simple grid building can be seen along the California expressways, in Wall Street, covering the surface of New York’s Central Park, at the Palazzo Chiericati in Vicenza, wrapping the caryatids in Athens, surrounding Piazza Navona, at the Grand Canyon, in Positano, the Taj Mahal, or Mecca. A relentless line with many iconographic values: part architecture, part urban design, part landscape, part art in public spaces, part dream, part real; but, most importantly, a full commentary on the spirit of networking, the similarities of the new global culture, and the necessity for local sustainable strategies. 

As a result of its success, Superstudio engages yet again in another project involving the interpretation of literary texts –Jose Luis Borges’ Fictions, the formalization of minimalist and land art, and the production of a fictitious neo-pragmatism. The images on their “Reflected Architecture” project are no longer utopian yet they are not completely real; in order to entrench their projects with implementation potential, the Italian group provides precise measurements and geometries, propose a great variety of materials, and act locally depending on the conditions of the site. The projects include a forested cubic island in the middle of the Golden Bridge, a rectangular pool serving as a water receptacle for the Niagara Falls, an agricultural field planted as a mosaic of world flags, a series of ideal cities forming perfect geometric figures, and a group of images of salvaged Florentine monuments after the forthcoming great flood –climate change.[4]

Although unrealized, the so-called Continuous Monument and Reflected Architecture projects mark the beginning of a new conception of the city and its domestic spaces; a provocative approach to cartography and representation; an imaginative position to bring attention to urbanism, architecture, and landscape. These exemplary projects represent the apogee of a superlative quality. Colossal conceptual projects make us aware of the poor state of our everyday life and bring awareness into the realm of our own human possibilities. Their time has come again. 

[1] Wall, Alex. Programming the urban surface (1999). CENTER, Volume14: On Landscape Urbanism. Center for American Architecture and Design, 2007. [2] For a detailed historic description see: Jackson, Kenneth T. Encyclopedia of New York City. Yale University Press, 1995. or Blackmar Elizabeth and Roy Rosenzweig. The park and the people: a history of Central Park. Cornell University Press, 1992. [3] See: Gargiani Roberto and Beatrice Lampariello. Superstudio. Editori Laterza, 2010. [4] Gargiani Roberto and Beatrice Lampariello, Ibid, 2010.

REDEFINING THE CONCEPT OF "GREEN SPACE"

By: Jaime Correa

The rules have changed. The contemporary urban design project must concern itself with the recollection of unique traces on the horizontal surface (the choreography of the ground plane), the vertical dimension (the geography of natural and man-made topographies), and the aerial view (the cosmology of the roof plane).[1] In addition to these three Ptolemaic dimensions, the neglected dimension of time must also be included, not as a source of nostalgia or memorabilia, but as a source of transformation, change, dynamic experience, interaction, negotiation, and continuous evolution. The juxtaposition of these three surfaces (ground plane, vertical plan, and rooftops) and the time dimension shall constitute the preferred field of operation for the contemporary urban designer. If understood correctly, this strategy will cultivate a brand new type of designer - one who gets involved in the understanding of the city not just from its most pragmatic approach but from its conceptual reality.

The strategy here proposed will blur the current boundaries between urban design, architecture, landscape and conceptual art: from the sidewalk to the street to the buildings to the blocks to the roofs to the neighborhood to the entire infrastructural matrix. In the words of James Corner, “it suggests contemporary interests in surface continuities, where roofs and grounds become one and the same”.[2] This is the most contemporary attempt to create an environment that is not so much the object of formal contortions but the focus of an ecological and cultural approach to systems and elements setting in motion a diverse network of interactions.

In a context like this, green space may or may not have public access; green space may be built or un-built; green space is more than farms, homesteads, sport fields, wetlands, natural reserves, tree corridors, vegetable markets, or plot gardens; green space is more than just a city park, a protected area, a picturesque garden, an extensive woodland, a greenway, a river corridor, a lawn, a courtyard, or a flower box;[3] green space is much more than LEED and, under current conditions, it may not even get the lower level of LEED certification; green space is not parsley around the pig; green space is, in fact, the continuous surface of the earth to the maximum extreme of its extents – including all sentient beings, landscape,[4] the contemporary metropolis, and its problems of urbanization and sub-urbanization.

A new strategic framework suggests a reconsideration of conceptual, operative, and representational techniques. We can no longer diminish our imagination potential with pragmatic concerns or political compromise. At the end of the day, there will be lots, buildings, and neighborhoods; but, their oversimplification is a contagious American disease -one which prevents us from dreaming. I am convinced that a new breed of elegant designers will be able to reconcile the complexity of vast regional scales and the importance of the everyday and its small pieces of territory.

The physical realm of the city, its representation, and our human imagination are not three separate worlds. The ambitious project for the reconstitution of America must not exclude any of them. As a visionary endeavor, it shall be one in which opportunity, experience, imagination, speculative thickening, art, philosophy, religion, and science are rediscovered to form a brand new ecology within a world of possibilities. Green space, understood as the totality of our current situation, must become the contemporary ecological disturbance which will produce and enrich a truly new American civilization.

[1] For a detailed discussion see Denis Cosgrove’s introduction to the Ptolemaic concepts of Cosmology, Geography and Corography at: Cosgrove, Denis. Liminal geometry and elemental landscape: construction and representation. Recovering Landscape: essays in contemporary landscape architecture. James Corner, ed. Princeton Architectural Press, 1999. [2] Corner, James. Ibid, 2006 [3] See Perez Joachim and Jaime Correa. Agricultural Urbanism Along the Transect. A 2010 Annual Canin Research Award report between the University of Miami and Canin and Associates in Orlando, Florida. [4] I used the term “landscape” as a loose synonym for “untouched wilderness”. In the contemporary condition, cityscape and countryside have lost their boundaries and their true meaning. We are now confronted with a boundless metropolis encroaching on what seems to be a wild landscape. As part of our current difficulty, there is a definitional paradox: how can wilderness be defined in a planet where almost every piece of its territory has been modified by mankind?

WHAT WE SEE IS WHAT WE BUILT

By: Jaime Correa


At the beginning of the twentieth century, only sixteen cities in the world had populations exceeding one million people, yet at the close of the first decade of the new millennium more than five hundred have reached the same mark and more than half of the world’s population has elected to live within the confines of urban territories; just within the next ten years, 70 million people per year will be added to the world’s urban population. This is not an easy concept to understand. The rapid urbanization of the world brings all of us to wonder about the opposition of urbanism and landscape, scarcity and sustainability, nature and the man-made, time and space, determinism and free-will, change and permanence, industrialization and self-sufficiency, or entropy and recovery.

The nowadays familiar consequences of this rampant process of urbanization have been: environmental degradation, climate change,[1] water shortages, agricultural deficiencies, desertification, deforestation, depletion of natural energy sources, fossil fuel dependency, overpopulation, and the irreparable loss of biodiversity. Whether we like it or not, the construction of the city entails the subjugation of nature and landscape. We find our selves at a historic threshold in which we must be aware of every human action and every collective determination. A time which will abide by a new model deploying creative sustainable solutions and a more holistic approach to urban development; a more promising and radical form of a hybrid practice than those defined by rigid disciplinary categorizations. 

The medical profession hides its mistakes in the tombs of the modern necropolis; architecture and urban design display them for decades and centuries to come. Therefore, our work must necessarily involve the entire range of design options with distinguishable ethical, moral, and metaphysical responsibilities. Professor Richard T. T. Forman at the Harvard School of Design describes it in a few words, “imagine a group of rhinos rampaging through a restaurant, while we concentrate on adjusting the napkins, filling the glass, and brushing some crumbs. So it seems on the land, we focus on our house lots, our small developments, sometimes our towns, while giant forces are degrading, even transforming our valuable properties”.[2] In fact, all problems are tractable rather than hopeless or complex. 

What we see is what we built!

[1] Scientists are still arguing about the potential causes and effects of the current climate variations. To our dismay, they do not have a definite answer.[2] Forman, Richard T. T. Urban Regions: ecology and planning beyond the city. Cambridge University Press, 2008.

A COUNTRY WITHOUT ROMAN RUINS

By: Jaime Correa

It would be difficult, if not impossible, to find Roman ruins in America. This absence of a direct lineage to a great civilization generates a rootless culture which has been trained to think of its regional fields as a resolute vacuum of virgin lands, and of its cities as disturbances within pristine ecological mosaics.[1] The absent of a lineage coupled with the desire to modify every corner of a “virgin” world creates an urban disengagement and a desire for the idea of landscape to fill, rigorously, the ills of the present and the anxieties of the future. 

In a collective logic where cities are perceived as disturbances, branding operations force upon all of us a system of false characterizations about their urban content and that of the regional field. Somehow, we have been told that America is nothing but a conglomeration of: first, banal issues of geography -water, weather, mountains, canyons, or mesas; second, issues of cultural hybridization -Islamic mosques in New York, the so-called Miami “Cuban/Latino refuge”, or even Mexican food; and third, nostalgic recollections of small invented territories -represented by our invention of the concept of “historic neighborhood” and “historic architecture” or by the preservation of vast amounts of territories under the National Park System. This three-fold type of branding mechanism generates identification marks and regional atmospheres that have nothing to do with nature, art, or science and which can only be described as a commodity or as an excursion into a series of “themed environments”. America is no longer understood as a mosaic of natural regions but as a place of relentless sameness and absolute lack of distinction; a retrograde experience, in which all future interventions are not judged by their own merits but by their capacity to fit within the rules; a moment in time in which change and advancement are seeing with suspicion or denial.

Cities continue loosing population to their suburban counterparts; large areas of the region are paved over; huge pieces of public infrastructure are subjected to deterioration; economic development is taken prisoner by political figures looking after themselves; racial struggles find their own abode in the metropolis; fossil fuel dependency and environmental problems are a matter of fact; and, most importantly, decreased densities and extensive vegetation removal continue at an accelerated pace. Everything unfit to the branding slogans is pulled away from the political discourse; as a result, intelligent contemporary proposals never see the light of the day unless they show up, by choice or by default, as part of a natural catastrophe, as part of a shameful political scandal, or when inflexible post-Fordist development practices reveal our current human isolation, our dependence on fossil fuels, and our absence of alternative infrastructures.

In the midst of these circumstances, urbanism plays a secondary role; an inferior position in which design, science, art, myth, and poetry are no longer the lens through which new building disciplines can emerge; a minor job where tourism, recreation, destination entertainment, preservation, real estate development, civil engineering, political games, traditional recollections, and racial struggles replace the unique metaphysical possibilities of a discipline in search of new modes of description, scholarship, and discourse.

[1] See McHarg, Ian L. Design with nature. John Wiley and Sons. 1992.

AMERICA: A CONCEPT WHICH NO LONGER EXISTS

By: Jaime Correa

A RESPONSE TO ANDRES DUANY

Andres:

I enjoyed your interpretation of the current situation at the new Harvard School of Design (formerly known as GSD). However, as I told you many times before, Harvard should not be the yardstick against which the world should be measured. If you add to the events in your e-mail the new P-2-P initiative by Nikos Salingaros and Michael Mehaffy, the recent "Small Scale, Big Change" exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the renewal of socio-political planning currently sponsored by the University of California, at Berkeley, or the kin interest of every American school of architecture and planning on issues of under-development through the so-called "Informal Urbanism" rubric, then you will be able to understand that all of these issues are nothing but effects of very confused minds -minds which are completely taken over by the desperate circumstances in which we find ourselves nowadays.

I can't see my self at war with anybody and have difficulties understanding any of the above proposals as threats to the survival of the goals and objectives so preciously defended by the Congress for the New Urbanism.

America is a concept which no longer exists; an idea which is not operative anymore. 

For those of us who have had the privilege of living abroad for a few months, our perception of America has widened through cultural experience, collegiate discussions, and comparative studies. It is not hard to see that the outside image of America has changed and that, no matter what we do, things will never be the same. The world is experiencing an America of sufferance, distress, and failed policies; an America where conservative efforts have organized an irrational blockade to prevent our own progress and the development of original ideas; an America which our own forefathers would have despised for its lack of innovation in the fields of philosophy, politics, social and economic development, science, and art; an America where mytho-poetic dimensions are long gone and where dreams are sabotaged by the so-called “realists”; an America where daily debates about economic opportunity end up in discussions about white supremacy, racism, religion, or sexual orientation; an America of human damnation and confused democracies; an America without identity or capacity for self-sufficiency; an America with a vast territory yet stagnant natural resources; a neurotic America full of commodities yet lacking leadership and direction; an America with abandoned and unprepared teenagers and with an exhausted supply of elderly people under the poverty line; an America which is nothing but a dystopia that no longer exists; most importantly, an America which is neither a research topic for Harvard nor the focus of attention of our so beloved Congress for the New Urbanism (C.N.U.).

The dismantling of the Berlin wall, in 1989, was the urban collective symbol that acknowledged a troubled soviet system and the beginning of a new period of unity and innovation. In the landscape of America, this type of symbolic action has no correspondence. All we have is the economic crisis of 2008 or the political failures and terrorist attacks of 9/11. Our meaningful values and successes are not measured against physical structures but through the abstraction of economic ideas which are difficult to grasp for normal Americans i.e. the New York Stock Exchange listings, the federal Rate of Return, the national census demographic data, political polls, the national unemployment rate, the Gross National Product, and many more; all of them, however, pointing out to an imminent failure and to results which are avoided by government and still remain unacknowledged by the big business machines –including Ivy League universities and intellectual groups like the CNU.

America fears innovation in all fields, including arts and sciences. Nothing genuinely innovative has been proposed to reconstitute the original American dream or to keep abreast with the technological discoveries that are forcing our civilization to evolve in quantum leaps. After 30 years of experience, we can honestly state that planning is a failure and urbanism is almost dead; that urban form discussions, by themselves, will never stop the rampant process of global urbanization. It is a cosmic joke; the more we insist on the repair of suburbia or the reconstitution of "urbia", the more serendipitous and chaotic the city becomes. To the point in which many of us are losing faith not only on eternal principles and natural laws but on quantum concepts and everything else that our contemporary civilization has to offer.

Despite futile attempts to restore what is left standing, no strategic proposal seems to work because every piece of patchwork is based on our old cultural habits and patterns of consumption; on the assumption that the individual must reign over the welfare of society; on our self-imposed ignorance about the inter-connection of the world and our role as creators of change; on ideas of planning which do not take into account quantum serendipity and chaos; on nostalgic views of a post-modern world in which everything past was formally, morally and ethically much better than what we, as individuals with a human mind, can propose today; on our own failure to recognize that the system is doomed and that the so-called promise of the “Audacity of Hope” has felt short. But, most importantly, neither intellectuals nor universities, like Harvard, have found a clear cut strategy to replace it.

I have been in total dismay for the past few months and my faith in urban design, as a redeemer of society, is already running short. Let us not see these disparate proposals as moments of confrontation or denial, but as opportunities to move a stagnant professional state of affairs into a more hopeful and positive direction. Unfortunately, the real estate bubble of the past 10 years blinded us with our futile attachments to consumerism, fame, and fortune. Meanwhile, a new breed of design was on the making; a breed which, by choice or by default, has been neglected by each and every one of us.

This is an important moment in time. Let us not waste it on futile ideological battles but on the production of a set of alternatives that will help America move forward into the future.

Urbanism, if it does exist, is not a theory; urbanism is both an art and a science.

E-mail to Andres Duany - Oct 19, 2010, at 5:48 AM

DUANY'S PREDICTION OF A HARVARD COUP

By: Andres Duany

Last April, upon attending a remarkable conference at the Harvard GSD, I predicted that it would be taken over in a coup. I recognized a classic Latin American-style operation. It was clear that the venerable Urban Design program would be eliminated or replaced by Landscape Urbanism. Today, it is possible to confirm that the coup was completed in September--and that it was a strategic masterpiece.

To summarize:

The first step was the hiring of Charles Waldheim, who, after long and patient preparation, had circled in from the academic hinterland acquiring "famous victories" at Illinois and Toronto.

The second step was the "general strike" of the huge Ecological Urbanism Conference--the one that I attended last April. With some thirty speakers, it was both a remarkable show of force, and simultaneously the casting call for the next faculty. The conference began with a shock: Rem Koolhaas' keynote address destabilized the then-current GSD regime. It was most unexpected to see the grand, aging revolutionary, distancing himself from all starchitect work (including his own) and aligning anew with his origins in the "humble, local and climatically responsive" work of his 60s teacher, Jane Drew (I made a note at the time "Jane Drew is the New Leonidov!"). To my fevered imagination, it was quite a frisson to witness a real show trial.

Then another shock: Midway though the conference there was suddenly a very unusual performance for a university president. Drew Faust transcended the expected insipid greeting, baring quite some fang when stating forcibly that the GSD was going to change to the ecological line--and to get used to it. Dean Mohsen Mostafavi followed with an interpretation of what was meant by that change: an unalterable commitment to the ecological basis but also, soothingly, assurances that the GSD would not neglect the high-design filter.

The third step was the publication of a red brick-like summa of the proceedings, Ecological Urbanism--the first official guide of the new regime. In size and weight and format it is clearly a replacement to Rem's silver SMLXL testament.

Then last month, by interview, Charles Waldheim disclosed that the once "small" Landscape Architecture Department he now heads would within a year hire ten new faculty. He also announced (in both the interview and in the summa) the official name change for the party, from the revolutionary, unique, branded, "Landscape Urbanism" to the reassuring, generalized, mature--conservative even--"Ecological Urbanism". A by-the-book protocol, just as the glamorous but scary "Red Brigades" transmute into comforting "socialists" once they take power.

Then, it was announced that Rahul Mehrotra (a denizen of India) was hired as a full professor with tenure to head the Urban Design Program. Alex Krieger, the levelheaded head of that program is presumably out. It is not difficult to conclude given Rahul's specialization, that the Urban Design Program will morph entirely toward third world initiatives--all offshore--thereby leaving the field clear for Landscape/Ecological Urbanism to be the GSD's only urban program operating in North America and Europe.

Done!

This coup was brilliantly conceived and comprehensively executed. Machado and Silvetti, "plantados" in gentlemanly formal principles, will probably retire soon in frustration. The agile Koolhaas will be the one Old Party survivor, as he has already provided the intellectual underpinnings for Urban Design's third world focus (with his Lagos work) while supplying infrastructural meta-visions (North Sea Power Rings et al.) such that will allow Ecological Urbanism to seem downright pragmatic.

So. . . there will not be much of whatever remained of the urbane, urban design sensibility. Landscape/Ecological Urbanism will rule without dissension.

The CNU should now stand to salute Charles Waldheim and his companions. As Churchill said of Rommel in 1941: "We have against us a very daring and skillful opponent and, may I say across the havoc of war, a great general."

E-mail sent to Jaime Correa - October 18th, 2010 at 8:51 pm