Chandigarh rethink: transforming ruralities & edge(ness) in global urbanities

edited by Manu P. Sobti, ORO Editions, Novato, CA,USA, 2017, 279 pp. ISBN 978-1-939621-36-8.

This is a contribution to what is becoming a sub-genre in its own right: books reporting on the work of graduate students in planning and urban design. Characterized by its independence from administrative and contractual constraints, such work can produce fresh perspectives on the development of acity, though it may be of limited interest beyond people familiar with the area. In some cases, innovative teaching methods will appeal to a broader audience of instructors. The most compelling publications are those that articulate a strong theoretical perspective. Such is the case with Chandigarh rethink, which makes the argument that development at the edges, in particular in India, and more broadly in Global South cities, often present surbanization that is truer to the local social and political conditions than the institutionalized development that marks more central locations. Chandigarh, the epitome of grand modernist planning and design servicing a centralized political vision, is a case in point. Sobti posits that an urban edge denotes a physical condition, a metaphoric concept, and a design methodology. Such tenets are derived from empirical work and explorations through design from a series of urban design studios conducted by him in India. In the first chapter, he develops the idea that edges should be looked at from ‘within’ rather than from ‘without’, and in terms of de-ruralization rather than urbanization. Such a perspective allows unveiling of the ‘ex-urban landscape matrix’. For urban morphologists, such ideas are certainly evocative of fringe-belt theories, and more broadly of the notions that natural and human-made barriers and boundaries, as well as inherited spatial forms, such as agricultural allotment patterns, are informing morphogenesis. Five essays by invited contributors explore development at the social, political and spatial margins in Chandigarh, and beyond. In 2009 and 2015,the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s School of Architecture and Urban Planning urban design students collaborated with their peers from local institutions to explore Chandigarh’s urbanization processes and prospects. Their work is featured in the second half of the book.

The Architecture writer Anthony Tung on Mass to Membrane:

Nic Goldsmith's Mass to Membrane reads as lightly and succinctly as his architecture. It is both a basic and reflective text on the history and evolution of lightweight, membrane-covered tensegrity structures and an architect's diary of creative problem-solving on the cutting edge of emerging new technologies. Starting with the earliest membrane structures: traditional American Indian teepees, Bedouin goat-hair tents, and Mongolian yurts, Goldsmith journeys over 4,000 years to acoustically refined and portable concert halls, to an iconic urban landmark: the luminous roof of the Rosa Parks transit center in Detroit, to a moveable and energy-efficient skyscraper. And for all its sophisticated scientific engineering, he also shows readers pure mathematic beauty: as in the delightful shade-providing canopy in the Sky Song plaza at Arizona State University. In all, across 40 years of award-winning international practice, Goldsmith’s Mass and Membrane is a journey of the human imagination that reveals ethereal and economic options for a more sustainable future.

By Anthony M. Tung author of Preserving the World's Great Cities

The architecture was little more than an air-conditioned tin shack. A whiff of rotting garbage scented the air. The pavement was greased from 10,000 leaky crankcases. It was the Bi-Lo grocery store parking lot at Edisto Beach, South Carolina, on Friday afternoon.

Places like the Bi-Lo parking lot are simply necessary, neither good nor bad. They knit the world together.

Inside the Bi-Lo, pressed chino shorts brushed up against overalls in the beer cooler while a mom outside toted key lime pies and marrow bones to a minivan and warned her children not to run.

A black SUV that, 800 miles and a day earlier, had crossed the George Washington Bridge now rested in the Bi-Lo handicapped parking space while its driver picked up some Tums.

An uncle walked out of the store with three shiny red shovels and yellow pails.

At daybreak the next day, just above and to the right of the ice vending machine, Venus ascended to heaven over an empty parking lot.

Not far away, three yellow pails were lined up on a seaside porch while the children slept.

Link to Source

A Garden Diary
When the first cricket sings

There’s been a lot of bad news recently about climate change. The president is setting up a commission because some people think it’s a hoax. Others say that the world is at a tipping point. For myself, I like to look out the window.

The first robins arrived in my garden on February 9. Last year they arrived on February 18.
How do I know that? Because I keep a garden diary.

Thomas Jefferson observed that the red maples bloomed as early as February 18 outside the window of his study at Monticello in Virginia. So he noted it in his diary.

I keep a record of when migratory birds arrive, when crickets first sing, and the day that daffodils bloom. Not because it’s important to anyone else, but because it makes me smile.

Like a guestbook with the names and dates of old friends, a garden diary offers a connection to the natural world and the reassurance that -- at least for now -- life continues.

On sleepless nights, I’ve noted that lightning bugs return sometime between May 8-18 each year, untroubled by gravity, floating skyward.

For Jefferson, they first appeared on May 8.

New Jersey Rest Stop
Messy, like democracy

The car radio program was about immigrants, paranoia, criminals, distrust, and walls.

“Would you like a cup of coffee”, my daughter asked, as she turned on the right blinker and pulled into the Molly Pitcher rest stop on the New Jersey Turnpike.

I like places like Molly Pitcher. They’re not much to look at, and maybe that’s the point: they’re messy, and a little uncomfortable. But you might see an oligarch standing in line behind a mother of three who works at Wal-Mart, or hear a chorus of English, Spanish, Arabic, and Russian- inflected voices at Arthur Treacher’s, as I did that December afternoon, ordering the Shrimp Boat Special for $12.99.

I ordered a small coffee (in a Southern accent) from the Starbucks food truck, and paid for it with three dollar bills, which had engraved on their greenbacks these words:

e pluribus unum.