Baltimore and Seattle: Cities on the Edge [Forum]

F O R U M The American Institute of Architects Committee on Design Baltimore and Seattle: Cities on the Edge The work of the American city today is the work of manufacturing the experience of city life. At least, that’s my take on two recent, fascinating visits to Baltimore and Seattle. Both cities are very different from the city of production, the city of finance or the city of government. But they’re not, maybe, so different from cities of the more distant past. In eighteenth-century London, Samuel Johnson and his circle spent a lot of time talking in coffee houses. “There are two Starbucks on this block,” one of our guides informed us, “which is a rather low density for Seattle.” After the interregnum of the Industrial Revo- lution, we are seeing a return to the idea of the city as a place where we go to seek social and cultural exchange as members of a community. One hears now of people who work in, say, Silicon Valley and take a weekend hotel room in downtown San Francisco to “have a life.” In the past, we worked in the city and went to the country to recreate. Today, we often work in the burbs and head down- town for recreation. It’s a major flip-flop. What kind of urban recreation do we pursue? Ballparks, festival marketplaces, waterfronts, art museums, concert halls, sidewalk cafes. We are not always that intensely focused, though, on what we are ostensibly seeing. When I was young and went to the ballpark, half the fans had their ballpoints out, keeping score in their programs. At games in Baltimore and Seattle, I saw not a single person doing that. In the crowded art museums, the visitors often seem only vaguely aware of the art. We really seek something else: to experience ourselves as members of a public. Isolated behind the screens of our cars and televisions, we are starved for that lost experience. And publicness is the very essence of city life. The coffee and food, the base paths and Van Goghs, the music and shopping, are not so important in themselves. They are the game boards around which we Robert Campbell, FAIA These forum pages are produced under an agreement between the Design History Foundation and the American Institute of Architects. AIA’s Committee on Design program last year included meetings in Baltimore and Seattle, covered in this article. For information about membership and upcoming pro- grams, call 800-242-3837 or visit www.e-architect.com/pia/cod . gather. Feeling that we’re in public, that there is such a thing as a public: that’s the point. The two visits, Baltimore in April and Seattle in July, were undertaken by the American Insti- tute of Architects Committee on Design, chaired this year by Henry (Dusty) Reeder, faia, of Cam- bridge. Each year, the committee investigates two or more cities, studying their architecture and urban design by means of tours, lectures and sem- inars. Baltimore and Seattle are waterfront cities, of course, and Reeder titled his two-city confer- ence “The City at the Edge.” By this he meant not only the physical edge against the water but also the “edge of failure” against the inner city. Both city visits were immensely fruitful. The first thing one noticed was the water itself, and how different it felt in the two cities. Balti- more’s harbor, when viewed on a map, looks like a section through a birth canal. No surprise that it’s called the Inner Harbor: there’s a unique inward- ness to the water here. In Seattle, even though the city isn’t directly on the ocean, the harbor is per- ceived as an edge, a periphery. When you’re there, you feel you’re looking outward to the world. But why this obsession with water, anyway? Why are Americans of this era mesmerized by urban waterfronts? Aside from the obvious fact that waterfronts are newly available, thanks to the decline of industry, two explanations come to mind. One: the sheet of water establishes a con- nection with the rest of the world. Put your finger in the water and you’re touching an apprehensible substance that also touches Rotterdam and Hong Kong. Water becomes a metaphor for globaliza- tion. Two: water is sensual. It smells of salt and wind; it rustles and crashes with sound; it is cold and wet. In a world in which, to an amazing degree, sensual experience of the environment has given way to the mediated, abstracted experience of the digital monitor, we reach out in desperation for something palpable. PLACES 14:1