URBAN PRACTICE AND POLICY FORUM Spring Semester 2004
URBAN PRACTICE AND POLICY FORUM How can we live without our lives?
How will we know it's us without our past?-- Grapes Of Wrath by John Steinbeck
We have almost taken for granted the strategy adopted by all post WWII governments: modern cities are built by destroying memory.
-- Maria Katsounaki, Ekathimerini, Athens - August 20, 2003
In his recent book, "How Cities Work: Suburbs, Sprawl, and the Roads Not Taken", Alex Marshall, well known Norfolk, Virginia based urban critic, wrote:
…the most coherent shapers of the urban environment…have been two movements that are largely reactionary in nature. One is the environmental movement… The second is the historic preservation movement. From initial desires to save individual buildings, it has gradually evolved into a movement to conserve and promote entire urban environments… Like the environmental movement, it has significantly affected urban environments because its spokespeople are some of the few that coherently say "Stop" to the raging forces of development.
For the past two years, the Urban Practice and Policy Forum has emphasized the first of the shapers named in the above quotation, i.e., environmental concerns. Through a series of speakers the forum has examined the issues of urban environmental sustainability from the points of view of ecology, economy, and spirituality.
Throughout the presentation of these two fora, it became clear that what was needed to succeed was to ask questions, form hypotheses based on those questions, and test these hypotheses through action. In the process, the most important step was asking the right questions. And we found that the task was not easy.
The introductory essay to last year's forum stated:
But as our urban areas have enormously expanded in population, ‘urban sprawl’ and the decentralization of urban focus have threatened the communal cultural life of the city. We have literally redefined urban existence, jettisoning the old style pedestrian cities where the population lived and worked within walking distance of each other and the city center, and where the center of the city therefore served as a gathering place for cultural celebration.
The question was, "How can we change this? How can we make our inner cities once more vital places where people want to live, work, and find both their physical and spiritual center? How can we change them to cause people now living many miles away from the old city hub to want to return?
One obvious answer is through a renaissance in our inner cities brought about by the vehicle of what we call "historic preservation," bringing back to life the heartbeat of what made our cities desirable for past generations for the benefit of a new generation. But in order to achieve such a renaissance, we must ask and answer other questions that will lead us to the best path to follow. And if we ask the right questions, we may find that we will emphasize and fulfill the paths “less traveled by” of Robert Frost's famous poem, or "roads not taken" of Mr.Marshall's book title, and find thereby the place where we need to be. The 2003-2004 Urban Practice and Policy Forum will be a vehicle for discovering what those questions are.
Urban Practice and Policy Program
Stuart Wheeler, Coordinator
University of Richmond, Virginia 23173