Diversity, both in form and use

When reading Jane Jacobs, one of the things that struck me the most was her focus on diversity of building use and type in order to create a successful neighborhood. Her example was what she called the "monoculture of use" on Wall Street in the New York City of the 1960's. All the bankers would come rush in during the morning, go out for lunch, and rush back home after the markets closed. The tragedy of this situation, in her eyes, was that the area Wall Street occupied was left empty and without beneficial use in any other time of day than the ones listed above. Wall Street was so successful that any use other than "financial activities" had been priced out, and this pricing out was hurting the viability of Wall Street as a vibrant neighborhood. The same type of pattern has followed in many American downtowns during the 20th century, as they were designed to accommodate car commuters coming in from the suburbs and tended to shun the downtown residents that could make such an area be a thriving, 24-hour neighborhood. In short, these neighborhoods lacked diversity of use.

What's missing here? People! (well, other than officer Pepe, at least)

Another example Mrs. Jacobs sites is the dangerous playground in the solely residential neighborhood in urban Baltimore. This is a park that is surrounded by almost carbon-copy homes that are occupied by people who all fit into a very thin slice of the economic spectrum. Since most of these people lead similar lives, their schedules often mirror each other. These similar schedules then tended to leave the neighborhood park mostly empty for much of the day. This lack of attention and usage of the park led to it becoming the haunt of drug dealers and other dangerous elements. If there were a range of people with different living and working situations within this neighborhood, there would have been more usage of the park at different hours and a better chance that it would have been policed effectively. Again, these neighborhoods lacked diversity.

The diversity I'm describing is contained in the form of the buildings, in the types of people whom are found in the neighborhood, and the types of activities that go on there.

When I bike around the Industrial & Arts Districts, I find a wealth of people, buildings, and uses. It may not look the way you think a good neighborhood should, but it works pretty well as one.

This is a courtyard down an alleyway behind a converted industrial space. It really reminds me of Florence, but I think that's just from the yellow awnings and the vespas parked outside. Just so you know, the outside of the building looks like this:
So we've got non-traditional housing. We're talking about people who may or may not be "artists", but we can certainly say that, compared to the population at large, you have a large percentage of people that work on non-traditional schedules and often work where they live. Just a few blocks away, we find this:
Cool! But more importantly, it's a religious institution that might have a different schedule than working people. Then there's industrial workspace.
This brings a lot of people into the neighborhood in the middle of the day. You get sustained activity throughout the daytime hours. Another source of daytime activity is governmental work:
Do not mess with LA Water and Power: they will break you.
And of course, a vibrant neighborhood needs some good old fashioned upwardly mobile middle class folks.
But those are the tricky gentrifying folks that bear watching. Don't get over-eager, yuppie pioneers. We wouldn't want to create another monoculture. But for right now, you're just another slice of diversity.

Articulation

EoA here with a mid-week entry,

Articulation is one of those planner-y terms that gets thrown around quite a bit. Worse than that, it can get thrown around without people really understanding what they're saying. To that issue, let's let Wikipedia drop some knowledge.

What I wanted to talk about today is called "Rooftop Articulation". Whenever you see a building where the top few floors have got something interesting going on, that's rooftop articulation. There are some cities and schools of planning thought that like to make rooftop articulation mandatory in new construction, especially in business districts and downtowns. Opposing viewpoints call these types of zoning restrictions silly. They claim such requirements are a dictation of design from the city planner's office and stifle the innate creativity of architects. Other people claim that it can create a "wedding cake" effect where you'll end up with a bunch of weird stuff on the upper floors of buildings and a monoculture of rooftop articulations.

Sometimes it can be awesome:

Other times, not so much....

But! This isn't the "be bitchy about architects" blog, this is Industrianism. To that end, I wanted to talk about the rooftop articulations that I've found in and around my neighborhood. Now, these weren't regulated and required articulations, but rather go back to an earlier era when greater stock and pride was placed in the industrial spaces created within a city. Too often, new industrial space is cheaply constructed cubes made of cinder-block. Too often, new residential urban units are a mishmash of modernist architectural styles that comes out looking like crap. Planners and developers should take notice of the wealth of examples around them and try to incorporate that beauty into new developments.
This rooftop articulation, placed on the tower of the building, overlooks a large intersection. The tower on the corner, and the articulation on it that demands attention, helps to put an otherwise wide-open intersection, that would be extremely pedestrian unfriendly, into better perspective. Imagine, an old industrial site that happens to have modern sound planning principles! Maybe we should just look around a bit more...