5. Jackson (1)

The possibility of becoming truly acquainted with a city lies at the hands of many variables. A person can hold residence in a place forever and never quite gain a full grasp on its tone. The intended effect of an initial city plan is subjected, following conception, to the influence of all who pay a visit, either leaving a permanent park or passing through.

“The Stranger’s Path” as John Brinckerhoff Jackson describes it, is relative mostly to a town’s population. This path—its length, its depth of connection to history, its full realization—are intended to ease a traveler, typically a tourist, in gaining familiarity with a city or town and getting a sense of its essence. This path, Jackson asserts, generally begins with the bus or train station and ends with a city hall or the like, all along advertising “in crude form” the merits and amenities of the city. It becomes increasingly luxurious as it nears its end, a far cry from the poor establishments that surround the path’s starting point.

Köln Cathedral with Hauptbahnhof (at right)

Cologne, Germany, though, is a fine example of one such place that does not adhere to Jackson’s theory. Granted, he explicitly notes that “The Stranger’s Path” is markedly evident in American cities and towns, but Cologne exhibits a shockingly opposite effect from the one Jackson describes.

...en route...

The Deutsche Bahn, Germany’s national train system, runs entirely above ground. It is typical for a traveler to maintain full sight of a city through the process of approaching and entering the Hauptbanhof, or central train station. And when the traveler first exits Cologne’s Hauptbanhof, they are spat directly into the city’s main Platz, and at the foot of Cologne’s massive cathedral, the largest in the world.

Piazza San Marco: by JpL

Venice, Italy is one of the most improbable places I have ever visited. It is unbelievably beautiful and one cannot help constantly questioning, as my mother (from New Orleans) did, “How does this place exist? How is it still above water?” It certainly has managed to stay afloat for a very long time. The opposite of a city on a grid, Venice’s labyrinthine streets wind around the canals as if in an attempt to cause dizziness, but there is an odd order to it. Perhaps its small size aids an illusion of purposeful city planning, but we always felt at least slightly lost until we somehow ended up at our intended destination. J.B. Jackson generalizes the organization (planned or accidental) of towns and cities in the article “The Stranger’s Path.” I will not pretend to grasp his concept of the Stranger’s Path well enough to confidently apply it cities I know well (and there are certainly several I know better than Venice – I was there for only two nights). He does pay thoughtful attention to Venice in particular. Jackson acknowledges Piazza San Marco (St. Mark's Square), albeit slightly reluctantly, noting that despite its undeniable

beauty and social utility… it seems… that those who hold it up as the prototype of all civic (traffic-free) centers are not always aware of what makes it what it is. The piazza is not an area carved out of a residential district; its animation comes not from the art monuments which surround it; on the contrary, it is enclosed on three sides by a maze of streets and alleys whose function is almost exactly that of the Path. (27)

Often the best way to get around Venice is to wander. Aside from expensive gondola travel and the water cabs/busses that escort tourists around the city’s periphery, pedestrian traffic dominates Venetian transportation. The locals are friendly (in Italian) and the words “Piazza San Marco” are printed on buildings with arrows pointing in various directions. When we wanted to find it from our hotel, we essentially set off with the notion that we would find the famous plaza eventually. It was as if we were rats in a complex maze that featured a seemingly infinite number of possible paths to our destination. The tourist nodes were abundant. We followed signs, stopped for snacks, made a few purchases in Venetian glass and Italian leather shops. I photographed the signs, graffiti, food, and what appeared to be a McDonalds constructed before the Common Era. Mcdevecchio: by JpL We eventually made our way to the bustling San Marco. The architecture was magnificent and the view of the Grand Canal was breathtaking, as well as fitting with Jackson’s entry/exit node along the Path being a point of arrival for commerce, locals, and tourists. The hoards of people were outnumbered only by the pigeons. San Marco Dweller: i FEAR birds. i LOVE this little guy.Our long walk through Venice at least had the illusion of being a Stranger’s Path, leading us to this wonderful, crowded place. Jackson expresses frustration that, “the Mediterranean plaza… was never intended to serve… as a place of business” (27). Well, I’m pretty sure the café where we ended up sitting in order to take in the site charged more than we were even willing to pay. Still, the busy square started (or ended) with a vibrant body of water, was a seemingly unavoidable spot for transients to end up, and truly exuded vitality. Maybe Venice is made up of various Stanger’s Paths – I have yet to experience another city that enticed movement in such a mysteriously roundabout, yet purposeful manner.

For my Art of Travel, Spring 08 blog post about Venice, click on my photos or here: http://www.placeandliterature.com/node/6772

For my company's video channel based in L.A.'s version of Venice, Italy, Venice Beach, click here: www.venicethemenace.com

Boston's streetscape: Impressive? The street fascinates Jackson. Throughout the book, he mentions the significance of street networks, street life, and streetscapes as a fundamental part of modern American places. In "The Vernacular City," his explanation of the "commercial vernacular" suggests that streets are of equal importance as buildings to the American landscape (246). The role of streets in the landscape has only increased with the advent of the automobile. The modern "thoroughfare," for Jackson, is "an extremely efficient instrument for continual change and development" (245). His assertion that certain American cities appear "impressive" from the perspective of riding in a car reminded me of my own childhood experiences of driving through or to cities.

To visit relatives or family friends, interstate highways often took our car through Hartford, New York, and other northeastern metropoli, but the only destination city my family ever ventured to was Boston. Driving into Boston from the North on I-95 is an impressive vista, to be sure, but its quality is not of the same magnitude of, say, the Grand Canyon. My childhood trips to museums in the city with my family were before the completion of the Big Dig, an effort to alleviate traffic problems by constructing an underground network of highways. The route would bring us into what the city refers to as The Central Artery, via a giant stack of highways that violently penetrates the inner city.

In his essay The Accessible Landscape, Jackson discusses the concepts of territory and boundaries. He brings Robert Sack’s idea of ‘territoriality’ to light, which Sack defines as “the attempt by an individual or group to affect, influence, or control people, phenomena, and relationships by delimiting and asserting control of a geographical area” (70). This idea is not solely American, rather it can be seen in all areas of the world especially in the planning and organization of European cities. A prime example would be the continuous reorganization of Germany throughout the 20th century, particularly the in Berlin. As Eastern European Jews began immigrating into Berlin to escape persecution, especially from Poland and Russian, they began to gather in a district called Scheunenviertel. Its name, translated as “Barn Quarter”, comes from the number of barns and cattle sheds that dominated the area. The population was also dominated by a number of beggars, stereotyped by Germans as the Ostjuden: “the lazy unemployed who deserved to be deported.”[1] Even before the large immigrations, the area was considered the ‘dark district,’ serving as the home to the black market, criminals, and prostitutes. But we see by the gathering of these persons for a social power force within this district. At the same time, the outside world was also trying to suppress the district by pushing them together into a tight section of the city. This idea of segregation is further seen in the city with the construction of the Berlin Wall.

the vernacular is f'd upThough it is nice and rosy to think positively about the landscape of modern America as J.B. Jackson does in his book “Landscape In Sight”, I for one agree more with the Kunstlerterian perspective on our contemporary predicament. Yes, it is easy to accept what we are accustomed too in terms of American landscape or geography but as Kunstler points out in the “Geography of Nowhere”, Jackson is unable to criticize the purpose of architecture and the way things are laid out in America today. Who cares if the “strangers path” looks the same no matter you go, what is beyond that path, what is on the path and why are people being led on that path. Yes the vernacular way of being in America is something to take note of, but that way of being is destroying the natural world in which humans rely on to survive. Not only our we as Americans, with our western mentality, killing off the beautiful world whose essence existed way before we came along, we are also saying that it is ok to take no care for what we produce in this world and the impact it has on the planet and humanity. Americans to easily accept what is laid out in front of them. We let our presidents lead us in to pointless and costly wars, we let companies rape and pillage nature, and we buy into this system by supporting the bodies of “wisdom” and “production” that enable us to live are disgusting and wasteful lives. I for one cannot sit back and accept what is being built in America and the way our culture manipulates space and place. We are to advance of a civilization to live in a way that is wasteful, selfish, and ultimately unable to support itself. The landscape is only part of the problem, but it symbolizes the destruction and ugliness of our being. Is there a better way out there, I think so, we just have to work hard to find it.

Malevich: Airplane Flying- What perspective was he really thinking about?I can’t help thinking about the relationship between skiing and sitting comfortably in the window seat of a Boeing 777, looking out onto the quiet scene below. On the surface they are obviously very different; the first is an intense sport where one speeds down mountainous terrain, expending immense amounts of energy, while the second is a passive, ritual of observation to pass the time. However, they share a core characteristic that has kept me wrapped and addicted since childhood. They are both a form of helix sport.
Skiing is obviously a helix sport, as described by Jackson. It is a sport whose terrain “bears few visible signs of its function”; it’s about exploring a new environment, and takes one out of himself for the moment. This intoxicating effect, seeing the world from a new perspective is at the core of what a helix sport really is. So, it is actually pretty logical to consider viewing the earth from above, gliding over it in silence, to be in the same genre of activity. It’s not as intoxicating in terms of speed or adrenaline, but it does provide clarity amongst confusion. It’s so much easier to contemplate the earth when seen from above, it takes on the quality of a photograph, something that seems set in time and that distance and stasis allow the viewer to use his mind rather than body to experience the setting below.
Something that seems altogether unrelated is the influence this type of perspective had on artists. This new perspective is precisely what allowed creative energies to flow in a direction altogether external of the human condition. In an explanation of Modern Art ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aerial_landscape_art ) Kasimir Malevich points us to the aspects that are obvious but may not be immediately noticed. This form is absent of perspective or in many times depth. The canvas is used as a flat surface with no attempt to replicate the terrestrial scenes.
However, the interplay of this art form and aerial views may give us a new perspective on each. Jackson speaks of the way that the view from above comes alive mostly through contemplation of the details of what is below, the tensions on the ground and the way the forms embody them or seem to disregard them. Though I’m not a huge fan of abstract painting, applying this principle of looking beyond the forms to what they may or may not be hiding is interesting. Though detached, their angle on the world is striking and poignant in its removal. This as well applies to the landscape. Taking flight from the ground is a temporary escape from the quotidian that is only really important because of the fact that it’s temporary. It is valuable in the sense that this scene can help one gather her thoughts on her daily life and the relationships she has with both landscape and others.
This seems to be the real goal of helix sports. It’s an escape but not an isolated event. The temporary rush and out-of-body experience help us commune with nature, but not as an external being- more as a reflection of our desires and selves.

Loos Haus

J.B. Jackson critiqued modern architecture, but he wasn’t trying to replace the architecture of the 1950s with an older, specific style. He wanted architecture to be formed in recognition of present societal needs, and he wanted space to be organized in a way that would enhance domestic and social life.

Jackson wrote that buildings should not be considered art, like pieces of sculpture. Instead, buildings are structures designed for human use. They are three-dimensional compositions, and their interior spaces are as important as their exterior masses. Buildings are intended for actual clients who hold clear notions of what they want. Architects may have been creating dwellings in the International Style for the wealthy, but American housing developments reflected the average homeowner's desire for convenience and individuality. Americans choose houses that serve to accommodate their families' needs as they define them, rather than reflecting a utopian modern vision.

I’m confused though…..he critiques modern architecture (ie. Le Corbusier), and calls them “Ridiculous, Intellectual architecture”, and yet he doesn’t like architecture to be considered art. Wouldn’t art be the antithesis of “intellectual” architecture? Adolf Loos thought of ornamentation as criminal - not for abstract moral reasons, but because of the economics of labor and wasted materials in modern industrial civilization. Adolf Loos argued that because ornament was no longer an important manifestation of culture, the worker dedicated to its production could not be paid a fair price for his labor. Thus, didn’t he think of the ‘present’ social/cultural situation, which would place him on Jackson’s “good list”?

AMERICA (The Epitome)I have to admit that like JB Jackson, I too have a strange fascination with the vernacular landscape of America. I have always chalked this down to the fact that I didn't grow up in America, and therefore I find all obtuse aspects of American culture both amusing and of interest. I have traveled through West Africa and various other foreign places and seen many structures and landscapes that natives of that area might describe as unappealing or ugly, but I have found them authentic, charming or too revealing of the culture to dismiss. This is how I feel about America. Conversely, I have been depressed a almost reduced to tears of despair by many European landscapes that were familiar to me. Many parts of France, the country in which I spent most of my formative years, are the most miserable places I have ever had the misfortune to see. Whereas the suburbs and strip malls of America appear as symbols of something greater to me - they are illustrations or manifestations of the nation's history, present culture and its vision of the future. I was never able to see such meaning in the parts of France that I hated.

When I was a junior in high school I visited a friend of mine in the suburbs of Boston for a week. She apologized for her friends, her town, her life in Holliston Massachusetts, but I was deaf to her apologies and positively gleeful. A group of teenagers driving around in the woods, secretly drinking beer in each other's basements and cranking the radio up as they pulled up at the Burger King drivethru. How magnificent! I still love using and buying the red, white rimmed party cups because when I was growing up in France we always saw them in movie scenes at high school house parties.

I know no one will break out the violins for me, but I always wanted my friends to have crazy house parties instead of spending our weekends at the bars in the Latin Quarter. It's a true case of the grass always being greener on the other side. That is not to say I didn't love living in France and coming of age there, but there was always something alluring and incredible about the US. Everything is bigger, louder, brighter. The customer is always right, the choices are myriad and in the strip mall suburban architecture of "Amur'cuh" I saw these things. At my school is Paris we bartered American candy and boxes of mac 'n' cheese, and Abercrombie was all the rage, but these things didn't mean to us what they mean to people who grew up in America and what they mean to me now. Though I still get a kick out of Betty Crocker and American TV shows.

Embarassing Personal Photogaph: Me (really), on a bike, in the Sinai desert.I have to admit to an outsider's fascination with deserts. I grew up in the flat, green Midwest and then moved to New York at 17. Prior to that, my desert experience was limited to one family vacation to the Grand Canyon at age 14. But I am fascinated by the desert landscape, a term which indeed, Jackson notes, "conjures up a pleasant image of silence and mystery and strange beauty" (63). Since moving to New York, I've traveled through Texan, Mexican, and Israeli deserts, which essentially all look the same. I don't think my fascination with deserts stems from an interpretation of "the relentless progress of ruin and abandonment…as a kind of romantic growth, something to be recorded and perpetuated before it's too late" (62). The idea of what Jackson describes as "vanishing America" doesn't hold weight for me—the physical location of the desert, whether it be in the US or elsewhere, is not important. I am interested much more with the contradicting thoughts and emotions the desert lanscape elicits. What I want out of the desert is the opposite of progress: vast nothingness. I want the "panorama of endless range country with a rim of violet mesas and dark mountains" (57). What I see as one of the most interesting contradictions of my desert-fascination, and is clearly a tension that many others face, is the loneliness of the desert. Jackson describes Chihuahua's most striking feature, "exhilarating at first, then depressing, is its emptiness" (45). In the next chapter, writing on New Mexico, "it [was] the sort of landscape which (before the creation of the bomb) we associated with the world after history had come to an end" (57). Even though he then goes on to explain that this landscape may have existed more purely in the past, the concept behind desert fascination remains the same: many people like to live in shared spaces (i.e., cities, suburbs, towns), and then occasionally trek out to an empty place to see the difference. Is it that we want to feel humbled by nature? Do we like to imagine what it would be like to give up community, to “get back to the earth” and live in isolation? The desert is a challenge. I am enthralled by it, and afraid of it. Such is the case with many vast land or seascapes: the ocean, canyons, mountains, etc. Something so enormous, so entirely not created by man, and furthermore completely capable of destroying one, is both awe-and fear-inspiring. Perhaps the desert is so appealing to me because it represents a sort of physical Other, completely removed from the familiar geographic scenes from my life. Part of me worries that if I were to experience the desert more often, it would lose much of its significance. I am not a religious person, but to me the silence and mystery and strange beauty of the desert is something sacred.