I haven’t prepared the list, but I
have thought of how I would approach it. See, I wouldn’t start with the works
of the arrogant urban designers who are currently in vogue. Oh, they design
some beautiful urban spaces, for rich folks. And, they have good ideas, for a capitalist
society. But they haven’t even picked at the problems that have confronted our
settlements since the days when trade and commerce forced people out of their
tribal habits. This created the need to live among strangers, interestingly
enough coinciding in our western world with the advent of many world religions.
No, I would start with two works.
They aren’t easy ones. Both create sores on your soul and then pick at the
scabs. But, if one feels as I do, that a role of urban and regional planning is
to do for the “least of those among us,” they are essential. Reading them would
be approaching the dialectics of planning. To study planning, one would first
study anti-planning. Only then could we proceed bravely through the minefields
of thought toward some compromise.
The two books are, in order of
publication, “How the Other Half Lives,” by Jacob Riis, and “Night Comes to the
Cumberlands” by Harry Monroe Caudill. They represent the farther poles of human
settlement. In fact, the second is about rural, not urban settlements. Both,
however, shine a startling light on a layer of society that, while it nurtures
us in many ways, we prefer it remain hidden from view, much like the slums of
third-world countries lie hidden by the vast walls surrounding the tourist
resorts. But the light shone by these two books is like a door that never
closes completely; a partial and heart-rendering image remains.
Jacob Riis took his camera around
the slums of New York in the late 1800s and later published them, along with an
extensive narrative descriptions, in a magazine article. The result,
ultimately, was the publication of the full book. Suffice it to say, it touched
the conscious of a country the way that “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” and “The Jungle”
did. One reads of the young boy working in a sweatshop who, when asked how long
he had worked there, answered “Since I wuz.” We read of the hospital that
received 508 deserted babies in one year from streets, doorstops, gutters, and
church steps, babies whom the mothers couldn’t care for, and how, of that
figure, 333, or over 65 percent, died. We read of poor immigrant women working
in conditions such as the one that resulted in the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire and
the death of 148 workers.
We stop, dry our eyes, contemplate
the image of a trans-vaginal probe, and continue.
Caudill’s work deals with
Appalachia and how the coal mining industry wreaked havoc on both the earth and
society. As we momentarily experience relief at escaping the stifling confines
of the urban ghetto, we suddenly find ourselves going to work with the miner
who must lie flat on his coal car to traverse the tiny space that leads him to
a long day of working in the black dusty earth, a day broken by a lunch that
might consist of two halves of a biscuit separated by a layer of lard.
Have we learned anything over the
years? Much. Have we unlearned anything? Stay tuned. We know now how better to
hide our unwanted from view. The automobile allows us to move farther away and
to create our sanctuaries in homogeneous communities where most of the urban
planning takes place today. After all, it is much easier to plan, no, wait, we
don’t call it that anymore. It’s called “place-making” now and it involves all
sorts of visual treats for the residents of the chosen spaces. Anyway, it's easier to plan pretty places there. As for the
modern descendants of the Riis and Caudill’s subjects, those in the forgotten settlements,
don’t worry, the gangs have simply changed colors and drugs have replaced the
rum that made life bearable for a short period before destroying it. The
sweatshops are now in foreign countries or in the homes of undocumented
immigrants. Regardless, we have cheap clothes.
Our professional magazines are full
of color photos of the happy folks in the chosen communities. All is well. Or
is it? In the forgotten communities and hinterlands, is an anger brewing like
one of those science-fiction movies from the 1950s, a monster that will only
need a catalyst like an atomic bomb, or perhaps a massive flood to unleash
itself? Are we nearing the moment predicted by David Simon (creator of “The
Wire”) when the bricks will start flying? It they do, we should remember that they
will, like the New Testament rain, fall on the just and the unjust.
We are left to ponder the future as
always. We might also ponder the words with which Riis left us at the end of
his work when he quoted a portion of the immortal poem “The Parable,” by James
Russell Lowell:
—Think ye that building shall endure
Which shelters the noble and crushes the poor?
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| Photo by Riis of waifs sleeping in the streets |
See also: www.wattensawpress.com
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