To approach a city, or even a city neighborhood, as if it were a larger architectural problem, capable of being given order by converting it into a disciplined work of art, is to make the mistake of attempting to substitute art for life. “Visual order: its limitations and possibilities,” The Death and Life of Great American Cities (p373)

Despite all the sketchy renderings - watercolor, colored pencil, and that fancy Prismacolor(TM) marker - the true power of architecture lies in the construction documents. Add to that set a specifications regarding a whole host of details including materials and manufacturers, and there’s little flexibility for the contractor, who can request substitutions only before bidding and maybe unexpected change orders later. The architect and their consulting engineers literally put their stamp, or rather seal, on it. That’s control.

Today I got some good planning advice: “Only publicize results.”

Now, the governmental authorities most planners work under may not let them reserve PR opportunities to this extreme minimum, but there’s wisdom in such anti-braggadocio. The skills required to make a pretty plan are much easier to come by than the skills, time, and wherewithal to craft and implement a plan that can only be borne out on the decisions of hundreds, if not thousands of independent actors.

Plans can be pretty, art-like. Art isn’t bad. Even Jane Jacobs admits that art is rigorous. No matter the medium, artists must select what to show from the living world. That is, what fits within the frame, within the time span of the play, etc. Planmaking can be an art, but if one only designs the plan with little regard for the messy choices of life before and after the planning snapshot, it is all for naught - worse than staying quiet.

Agency is the word I prefer to use - not as it is used to describe organizations, but as it refers to action. Individuals have agency. As swept up as we might get in environments and how they might determine the behavior of those using it, there’s really no telling what individuals might do.

Economics helps. People are serving their own needs: making a living, recreating, traveling to work, eating, etc. There’s a personal economy at stake. Ignore it at your peril. That’s not to say folks will always act in their own best interest. We’re limited beings with limited time and limited information (for more, see Herbert Simon in the references).

This isn’t just splitting hairs. The design strategies are different between the art of planmaking and allowing for the life that takes place in placemaking.

Here’s an example:

I can make a rendering. Let’s say it’s photorealistic - really fancy, maybe a 3D massing model done in SketchUp with exterior materials rendered with an extension like Podium, probably with some clean up in Photoshop, which will also give me a chance to drop in a bunch of people using the space. The cost of all that software is nothing compared with the investment in time.

The design strategies are all different if you’re more interested in reality - in making spaces that people want to use and visit, rather than just be superimposed over. William Whyte and Kevin Lynch never had access to such tools, yet they developed design strategies that understood the life of city spaces.