Why I Am Here
I live in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin, a first-ring streetcar suburb due west of the City of Milwaukee. My wife grew up here, though we met years ago in my hometown of Cincinnati.
This is the place near my home.
SOURCE: Google Street View
People depend on the jobs and services provided here, though, outside the comfort of an automobile, few would choose to visit or to pass through here. This place was conceived, designed, and built through the lens of quantitative measures: level-of-service optimization, surface parking lot capacity, and outlot value maximization. This place is wholly unoriginal. No one yearns to be here. No one is comforted here. No one's humanity is uplifted here. This is a lowercase "place," simply a location on a map.
Here is another place near my home.
SOURCE: Visit Milwaukee
This place was first built using different measures. Quantitative, yes: housing units, retail square footage, street and sidewalk widths. But also qualitative measures: comfort, distinction, craft, and beauty. People depend on the jobs and services provided here, yet these needs are enveloped in significant want. People want to be here. People want to linger here. People want to pass through here. People feel comfortable here. This place is entirely original, not found anywhere else in the world. This is an uppercase "Place". A Place to recommend, a Place to visit, and a Place to love.
Our ancestors began building settlements and permanent structures in earnest 6-7,000 years ago. These places began as villages, grew into towns, and ballooned into cities. We built places that thrived, we built places that failed, we demolished, and we rebuilt. All along, we have built places that serve diverse human, ecological, cultural, and historical patterns [1].
Against this history, the first place is unprecedented, serving two narrow patterns: 1) transportation for a single mode and 2) a mechanistic exchange of goods and services.
SOURCE: Google Maps
We've largely built these places over the last 100 years of human settlement development. The moment they were conceived, they were unloved and unsustainable. These places undermine our essential humanness.
Few things are as important as how we humans choose to build. We cannot afford to build “places.” All humans deserve and need “Places.”
Let’s get to it.
Notes
1: A pattern describes the relationship between human activity and the built and/or natural environment best suited to enhance that activity.