Congress for the New Urbanism
So, the real reason we’re on this trip is that my mom is attending a conference in Seattle that’s basically a cult gathering for city planners plotting world domination through thoughtful zoning codes. Every time my mom comes back from a CNU conference she tells me how much I’d love it, which is not *that* weird considering the fact that despite my chosen career as a performance artist, a full shelf of my living room library is devoted to books on land use.
I’m not officially attending the conference this year (mostly I’m here to hike- more on that later) but they have a number of events that are open to the public so I dip into a few lectures here and there, catching snappy New Urbanist phrases like “Ped Shed” — the range in which the average pedestrian will walk rather than drive to local amenities- and “Just because you’re on the other side of the counter doesn’t mean you’re on the other side of the table when it comes to economic planning.” This one drove the CNU crowd wild. As in, they had to temporarily stop the talk for a standing ovation. I’d be shocked if less than two people threw their panties at the speaker.
And this was only the first panel discussion. On stage were the mayors of Grand Rapids, MO, San Jose, CA, and Anchorage, AK. The mayor of Grand Rapids wants to combat racism in the city through planning and zoning, the mayor of Anchorage is revitalizing a derelict piece of land on the outskirts of town, and the mayor of San Jose wants to make north San Jose “cool.” He’s a little too smarmy for his own good and my mom and I gravitate toward the mayor of Grand Rapids after the talk to chat about how to imbed equity into land use. Imbedding equity is a big theme of the conference this year. That and autonomous cars. Yup, you read that right. Autonomous cars are the next big thing in urban planning.
Despite how politician-ish and/or land-geeky and/or Jetsons obsessed the CNU folks are, the whole thing is totally thought provoking. I find myself full of ideas about how to translate these urban planning ideas into artistic projects. “Reversing trends is harder than implementing new ones,” says one of the speakers. What, I wonder, are the artistic trends I’d reverse? Working for free? Feeling guilty about being an artist? Devising work in a state of chaos? I bet we all have career trends we’d love to obliterate.
Then Majora Carter takes the stage and I’m brought back to the present. She talks about the difference between being able to shop and eat and work in the same neighborhood you live in versus having to travel outside of your home neighborhood to live your life. I try to remember the last time I lived and worked in the same neighborhood. It was while I was in college in D.C.. That was the first and last time my work, social, and basic human needs were met in my ped shed. Now I work all over the city in order to make ends meet as a freelancer and I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t exhausting.
By the time Majora exits the stage I’m feeling just as buzzed and culty as the rest of the new urbanists. I totally get why my mom wanted me to come to this conference with her. Is it too late to switch career paths? I could be a city planner, too! I could make cities that actually integrate people into their communities and surroundings! Or I could do any of the 13,715 theater projects that have come to mind today.
We run into my mom’s former boss, who’s kids I used to babysit for, in the lobby, as well as one of my mom’s classmates at architecture school. “Wow,” my mom’s former classmate says. “You’re, like, an adult or something now.” “Something like that,” I say. I was only eight when my Mom started architecture school so most of my memories are of playing hide and seek with my brother and hiding under her classmates desks.
That night we stop by a competition for conference attendees that pits planners against one another in an Oxford style debate about controversial urban planning tactics. This is one of the nerdiest, jargoniest, tweed suited events I’ve been to in my life. The obvious way of coping with this is beer but the bar’s cash register is broken and the line stretches twenty people deep across the bar. We find the end of the line and watch as a sewage and waste management team school their opposition on the topic of highway infrastructure reform in front of a panel of judges. The teams get drunker and less coherent with each passing round and the until one of the debaters resorts to a semi-cogent wine metaphor about how merlot and bordeaux are really just [insert the words “smart,” “growth,” “new,” and “urbanist” in whatever order you want however many times you want until time or your drink runs out].
“Let’s get out of here before the dance party starts,” my mom says. “There’s a dance party?!” I say. “Trust me,” she says, “you do NOT want to see what happens next.”
The look in her eyes tells me she’s speaking from traumatic experience. Guess I’ll have to wait until CNU 2018.
