Suburban Nation

Today I began to read quietly, and then with increasing excitement, through the pages of  "Suburban Nation". So completely are we defined by our surroundings that I had the odd sense that my recent life had been exposed to the world in the pages of the introduction, that the authors had taken careful note of my anxieties, apprehensions and frustrations over the course of a given week and codified them into treatise on how not to be.

Where once developers in America were revered as visionaries and immortalized as founding fathers, they now suffered public reputations as vandals and charlatans. They confront angry suburbanites, opposing all growth because the only growth they know is more of the same placeless, faceless and forgettable they have seen bleeding its way across the country. Modern zoning laws, banning most forms of mixed use neighborhoods, prevent the emergence of new Palmer Squares in favor of parking lots. This, and ignorance, greed and not infrequently, the conspicuous absence of any real plan have come together to turn suburban America into a vast cell block, house arrest for the upwardly mobile.

It was poignant and nostalgic to see the old town I once lived in, Mariemont, Ohio, in the pages of the text as an example of successful planning. The blueprint on display was from the early 1920's, but I could still identify the exact location of our old house, the field where we played soccer, the old hotel and the village square. At the time I was too young to understand the blessing, it seemed too normal and expected that life should be this way. At the time, I didn't understand what it meant to be able to walk to school, to see pedestrians out and about, to know your neighbors and to hear the chimes of a community clock tower.

Red Vienna

I'd made for Vienna to see the Karl Marx Hof, an apartment complex built when social democrats ran the city in the years following WWI. As a social, aesthetic project, seeing the building taught me a great deal. 

Consider something as seemingly trivial as the ideal proportion of building heights to the distances between them. Too tall, and you create a sense of suffocation. Too spread out and the area ceases to be a comforting, protected enclosure.  KMH apartments were about three stories high and wrapped around a large, enclosed area that was differentiated from the wider urban context, like the courtyard of a single home. 

In a typical urban and suburban setting, most of our encounters are instrumental; we make appointments and we have goals in mind as to what we want from our interactions, be they romantic, commercial and so on. But the KMH welcomed interactions with others for the sole reason that they were part of the architecture of your daily life. Speak to your neighbors, because you share, are invested in, a common space. Real interactions gradually become the foundation stones of real communities.

A great deal of modern planning, along with the digital age, has paradoxically divorced us from space and from the people who are physically present around us. It has given each individual the ability to create their own social apartheid. This problem was particularly acute in my personal diaspora experience as an Iranian American. While my mind was constantly in Iran, where I was powerless to affect direct change, I often didn't know the first thing about issues facing my own neighborhood, where I had the ability to make a real difference.

On issues that matter (eg. environment, social justice) we have no choice but to work together with all types of people, not just those we like or agree with. If strong ties are not cultivated in moments of stability and calm, we cannot expect to rely on them in moments of crisis and upheaval. 

I saw in the KMH an attempt to physically turn residents inward, to allow them to identify with common features of their daily lives. My hypothesis: over time, this type of architecture has the ability to translate into more interactions, more dialog, and ultimately, a greater willingness to build a future with others around you.  

Space and Life

I spent my childhood in Austin, shaped by married student housing, full of children, families and community. I swam in Barton Springs and watched the Christmas lights of Zilker Park, now slowly being destroyed by massive development projects. I fed pigeons at the hippy hangouts of UT and sailed through Lake Travis in our bright red family boat. Looking back I feel keenly the realization that as human beings, our personalities, the quality of our lives and interactions are in great measure the products of the physical spaces we live in.

The bustle and smog of Tehran in 90's, the gradual transition of the city's aesthetic, on display on the bodies of women, from navy blue and gray to the colorization of the Khatami years. The terraced homes of Masouleh, the adobe landscapes of Yazd, the great bridge in Esfahan...and then the green streets of that fateful summer, turned to red in full view of twenty first century social media.

My travels took me further afield, to dozens more cities. Some emerging from war, like pockmarked Beirut, Sarajevo and Mostar, where the location of urban killings were marked with red concrete, where lovers made out on benches surrounded by the headstones of Ottoman nobles. Others, like Kabul and Baghlan surrounded by rings of steel, bases and concrete barriers, were still very much at war. The quiet of grey dawns interrupted by the distant thud of a suicide bomb. And still others, like Cairo and Dhaka slums, were scenes of far quieter but equally deadly conflicts over resources, political voice and human dignity.

Fez, Istanbul, Seville, Zagreb, Vienna, Damascus, Mecca, Medina, London, Los Angeles and beyond. Each city spoke with a unique voice and presented a unique story, of how human beings attempted to interact with their material conditions (and not infrequently, their metaphysical ones), how they sought to create meaning, community, and belonging. Alternatively, they also presented stories of how centers of power attempted to comodify, disempower and atomize residents through deliberate manipulations of space.

I have finally settled on my life's calling. It is to make my mark on this earth by helping shape the spaces that people call home. To plan the cities emerging out of the developing world, and to help guide the trajectories of  struggling communities from blight to health and sustainability.