Journal of Urban Design and Mental Health 2018;4:4
EDITORIAL
Diversity and belonging in the city
Erin Sharp Newton, M. Arch
UD/MH Fellow, USA
UD/MH Fellow, USA
"To study the city means analyzing the full 360 degrees of reality that surrounds us through both concrete appearances, as well as its impalpable truths: time, memory, need and sentiment.
There are many ways that the frenetic growth of cities has created voids. These are not so much material voids lacking construction but are more the absence of a rapport between people and their context. For example, there are places that one goes to solely for work or solely for fun, places where some go and others do not, and there are places where one feels alien."
- Premise for CitizenCity, Erin Sharp for Cibic Workshop
In looking at the city, it is imperative to look at the people.
In the good city, diversity offers stimulating variety without becoming chaotic. The good city allows for belonging and a place to be oneself, without sacrificing community: a place to care for others, to not be self-confined. It is this balance that creates rich living.
And yet, in many cities, people find themselves with others but alone. These cities are often conflicted: held by their own nostalgia and history, and yet, in seeking to move forward, surrendering their essence discarded the old for the latest technological advance. In this complex interplay of past, present, and future, we search for meaning and fulfillment across a landscape of paradox.
Perhaps it is more helpful to imagine the city on the psychiatrist’s couch.
Mental health professionals help their patients understand and release the bondage of their past, while also preserving its richness in order to shape future hope. Perhaps the same lens can be applied to cities: by reading human experience into urbanism, architecture, and design; by attending to gaps and voids in the cultural landscape; and by exploring human relevance in a way that holds both memory and imagination, nostalgia and renewal.
This text is a speculative thought piece. It does not prescribe solutions. It opens a conceptual ground for imagination and inquiry.
The following malleable story structures are intended to inspire the revealing and reimagining of city–citizen relationships — conditions that may shape, constrain, or liberate a city’s hopes and dreams. They are questions, built to be lived inside.
In the good city, diversity offers stimulating variety without becoming chaotic. The good city allows for belonging and a place to be oneself, without sacrificing community: a place to care for others, to not be self-confined. It is this balance that creates rich living.
And yet, in many cities, people find themselves with others but alone. These cities are often conflicted: held by their own nostalgia and history, and yet, in seeking to move forward, surrendering their essence discarded the old for the latest technological advance. In this complex interplay of past, present, and future, we search for meaning and fulfillment across a landscape of paradox.
Perhaps it is more helpful to imagine the city on the psychiatrist’s couch.
Mental health professionals help their patients understand and release the bondage of their past, while also preserving its richness in order to shape future hope. Perhaps the same lens can be applied to cities: by reading human experience into urbanism, architecture, and design; by attending to gaps and voids in the cultural landscape; and by exploring human relevance in a way that holds both memory and imagination, nostalgia and renewal.
This text is a speculative thought piece. It does not prescribe solutions. It opens a conceptual ground for imagination and inquiry.
The following malleable story structures are intended to inspire the revealing and reimagining of city–citizen relationships — conditions that may shape, constrain, or liberate a city’s hopes and dreams. They are questions, built to be lived inside.
Visualize and imagine a city of young and only old.
Imagine a city where the young and the old are brought into close daily proximity.
Children up to age 13 live alongside older generations beginning at 60.
The middle generations are present, but move through as visitors, connectors, caretakers, and interpreters rather than as the dominant continuous presence. Early and late life are held in close relation, in constant exchange.
What forms when beginning and ending share the same ground?
Imagine a city where the young and the old are brought into close daily proximity.
Children up to age 13 live alongside older generations beginning at 60.
The middle generations are present, but move through as visitors, connectors, caretakers, and interpreters rather than as the dominant continuous presence. Early and late life are held in close relation, in constant exchange.
What forms when beginning and ending share the same ground?
Visualize and imagine a city of only single people.
Imagine a city of single people. People without an abundance of blood-ties.
This city is polka-dotted and uneven.
When the wind moves through it, a sense of unanchored possibility lifts into the air.
How does such a city behave when connection is chosen rather than inherited?
Imagine a city of single people. People without an abundance of blood-ties.
This city is polka-dotted and uneven.
When the wind moves through it, a sense of unanchored possibility lifts into the air.
How does such a city behave when connection is chosen rather than inherited?
Then there could be a city of "families".
We already know it. We call it suburbia.
It is the place of cookie-cutter houses, planned developments, and malls.
We are not certain if happiness lives there, or simply continuity.
What future does a city offer when life becomes repetition of form?
We already know it. We call it suburbia.
It is the place of cookie-cutter houses, planned developments, and malls.
We are not certain if happiness lives there, or simply continuity.
What future does a city offer when life becomes repetition of form?
Then there could be a city of citizens.
This is a favorite city of many. It is where all idealists want to go.
It is a place of conscience.
Where success is based on how much integrity you bring to your approach to your community.
Would it echo Switzerland? Canada?
This is a favorite city of many. It is where all idealists want to go.
It is a place of conscience.
Where success is based on how much integrity you bring to your approach to your community.
Would it echo Switzerland? Canada?
Oh for the city of independent thinking.
The city where each individual is fully able to think strongly using their own free will. These are not dependents. These are not vampires.
These are people free from false systems of rule. Independence is imagined yet survives only through interdependence.
In trying to secure freedom, it writes the rules that contain it.
What if freedom, born for independence, is the very thing that makes its own limits?
The city where each individual is fully able to think strongly using their own free will. These are not dependents. These are not vampires.
These are people free from false systems of rule. Independence is imagined yet survives only through interdependence.
In trying to secure freedom, it writes the rules that contain it.
What if freedom, born for independence, is the very thing that makes its own limits?
There could be the city of bondage.
A city where each inhabitant is held within a structure tied to another structure, and another, and another... an expanding architecture of dependence extending outward without clear limit.
What holds such a system together: coherence, or inertia?
Should such a city be broken apart, or is surrender part of its logic?
A city where each inhabitant is held within a structure tied to another structure, and another, and another... an expanding architecture of dependence extending outward without clear limit.
What holds such a system together: coherence, or inertia?
Should such a city be broken apart, or is surrender part of its logic?
The city of change: the ever-changing city.
This city refuses stability. It changes quickly, and it changes deliberately.
It does not wish to remain what it was yesterday.
What is left behind in its continuous reinvention? What accumulates in its invisible archives?
What is in its junkyard?
This city refuses stability. It changes quickly, and it changes deliberately.
It does not wish to remain what it was yesterday.
What is left behind in its continuous reinvention? What accumulates in its invisible archives?
What is in its junkyard?
Stop and imagine the city of culture.
A place where difference is not only accepted but continuously exchanged.
Here, museums become living exhibitions of the authentic self.
Open access transforms everyday life into a shared economy of human presence and expression.
How does a city reveal without overwhelming its own voices?
A place where difference is not only accepted but continuously exchanged.
Here, museums become living exhibitions of the authentic self.
Open access transforms everyday life into a shared economy of human presence and expression.
How does a city reveal without overwhelming its own voices?
For the city of time, material moves.
The city of time can only be expressed through movement: movement in buildings, cars, people, and elements.
In the city of time, cycles are precious. They move fast and slow in visible currents, both holding equal weight.
There is no absence, only presence.
What happens when cycles become celebrated in the city?
The city of time can only be expressed through movement: movement in buildings, cars, people, and elements.
In the city of time, cycles are precious. They move fast and slow in visible currents, both holding equal weight.
There is no absence, only presence.
What happens when cycles become celebrated in the city?
Finally, the city of transience.
Decay becomes revelation. Each form turns itself inside out, becoming something else.
A gas station becomes a nursery school with cleaner air than anywhere.
An abandoned factory becomes a shared space, open and unbounded.
This is the city of caterpillars and butterflies.
In such a place, does “irrational” become another word for intelligence?
Decay becomes revelation. Each form turns itself inside out, becoming something else.
A gas station becomes a nursery school with cleaner air than anywhere.
An abandoned factory becomes a shared space, open and unbounded.
This is the city of caterpillars and butterflies.
In such a place, does “irrational” become another word for intelligence?
A city is a place, a thing.
A city is a phenomenon, and a paradox.
A city is a phenomenon, and a paradox.
To understand the city is to understand the people who form it (from the outside in, and from the inside out).
In this way, cities become legible not as fixed systems, but as living, shifting relationships.
Through this lens, perhaps we can hold contradiction more easily: diversity and belonging, independence and community, memory and invention.
Alone becomes independent.
Together becomes harmonious.
In this way, cities become legible not as fixed systems, but as living, shifting relationships.
Through this lens, perhaps we can hold contradiction more easily: diversity and belonging, independence and community, memory and invention.
Alone becomes independent.
Together becomes harmonious.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
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Erin Sharp-Newton is a Fellow at the Centre for Urban Design and Mental Health and part of the NK Architects Healthcare Group in Morristown, New Jersey in the US. She holds a Masters degree in Architecture from UCLA and a Masters degree in Design from Domus Academy in Milan, Italy. Erin has lived and worked in Los Angeles, Milan, Philadelphia and New Jersey. Her exposure and experience span all areas of design, from architecture to the fine arts, from industrial design to technology, and her research and ideas have featured in venues such as Philips Solid Side and the Milan Design Fair. She is an Associate Member of the American Institute of Architects, a Certified Fitwel Ambassador, a Board Member of the Hunterdon Drug Awareness Program, and is on two Health & Human Services Local Advisory Committees. Erin believes that integrity and creativity are fundamental to the success of the multi-faceted world of design and living.
@ESharpNewton |