Serene Urbanism

A biophilic theory and practice of sustainable placemaking

Phillip James Tabb

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN: 9781317057031
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: Urban Planning & Landscaping

Serenity is becoming alarmingly absent from our daily existence, especially within the urban context. Time is dense and space is tumultuous. The idea of the serene has gained currency in postmodern discussions, and when combined with urbanism conjures questions, even contradictions, as the two ideas seem improbable yet their correspondence seems so inherently desirable. Integrated, these two constructs present design challenges as they manifest in differing ways across the rural–urban transect.

In response, Part I of this book establishes the theoretical framework through different contemporary perspectives, and concludes with a clear explanation of a theory of serene urbanism. The positive characteristics of urbanism and beneficial qualities of the serene are explored and related to sustainability, biophilia, placemaking and environmental design. Both principles and examples are presented as compelling portraits for the proposal of these new urban landscapes. Part II of the work is an in-depth exploration and analysis of serene urban ideas related to the intentional community being created outside of Atlanta, Georgia, USA. "Serenbe" is the name given to this place to commemorate the value and nuance between the serene and urban.

Part I

Theoretical framework for serene urbanism

1Introduction

On the sidewalks everyone holding either a giant coffee or a cell phone, as though a law had been declared against public displays of empty-handedness.¹

Serenity is becoming alarmingly absent from our daily existence, especially within the urban context. Time is dense and space is tumultuous. The modern world that surrounds us is complicated, contradictory and bewildering. It is complex in its overwhelming response to a world population of more than 7 billion people, the complicated infrastructures, political and economic systems, religious differences and conflicts, and inheritance of a built environment largely constructed and maintained by climate-changing, fossil-fuel energy sources. It is contradictory because many of the built works and technologies no longer support the solutions to the housing of a contemporary culture; rather, they are the cause of many of the problems that are a consequence of it. It is perplexing because of the enormity of the problems, and the time and resources necessary to actually overcome them.

The contemporary environment has evolved to sustain and better the human condition, yet it has come with unintended consequences. We continue to use our renewable resources at an unprecedented rate, global population is ever-increasing, the natural environment is shrinking and suffers from deforestation, neglect, species extinction, and the effects of global warming, and we continue to remain vulnerable to disease. In response, the concept of serene urbanism is designed to provide an alternative approach for future urban designs that is applicable to both new and existing contexts, and large and small settings. For certain, there is a need for more reflective, engaging, and insightful approaches to creating and sustaining habitation.

The contemporary condition

Contemporary culture is a complex global phenomenon that has left in its wake a trace in both time and space, and while not necessarily unique to our time, arguably it is one that defines it. Temporal density is a modern human condition where experiences, data, inputs, and information are processed within a shorter and increasingly compressed interval of time.² In other words, time becomes dense, filled with a throng of thoughts, emotions, considerations, and multitasking activities. Contemporary lifestyles, particularly within urban areas, demand a great deal of attention from which to navigate everyday functions that seem to accumulate more and more undertakings to think about and do. Over-attention to these complexities tends to create greater separation from direct experience and quality of presence in the places that we inhabit. Sometimes we can become so preoccupied that we walk from one room to another forgetting why we did so, or daydreaming while waiting at a stoplight. These are a consequence of temporal density. According to Walter Benjamin in his essay, “On Some Motifs in Baudelaire”:

Shock serves as a figure of hyper or over-stimulation, where a high degree of stimulation results in the shock defense cutting in, protecting by desensitizing and thereby impoverishing perception.³

Spatial tumultuousness is a by-product of rapidly changing urban growth, incessant geographic migration, and the need to respond to the evolving complexities of contemporary life. It is characterized by great disorder, commotion, turbulence, and agitation. It also can be accompanied by its opposite tendencies, with an environment of vapid spatiality, monotony, wearisome sameness, and soullessness. Found in locations dominated by the automobile, extant public utilities and infrastructure networks, and derelict districts abandoned to suburban migration, these territories display an inhuman and placeless character.

The consequences of these dimensions affect our vision and ability to meet future needs. They reach every area of the urban-to-rural transect, in which appropriate levels of the blend of serene natural spaces are integrated to varying kinds of urban places. Addressing critical issues such as world population and growth, placelessness, climate change, unsustainability, overreliance on technology, and profaneness are central to a truly livable future – and one with healthy, sustainable, and numinous qualities.

Population and growth

Is our survival dependent on maximizing population growth, or should we be more strategic, looking at other more controlled and balanced models? World population was under 1 billion people until the 1800s; in 1930 it doubled, and 30 years later it reached 3 billion. By the millennium, the world population reached 6 billion, and by 2015 it was more than 7 billion people.⁴ The growth rate peaked in the 1960s at around 2 percent and presently is in slow decline, but continues to increase in overall numbers. The “Blue Marble” was a NASA photograph taken on December 7, 1972 by the crew of the Apollo 17 spacecraft: a vivid expression of the wholeness as well as finite nature of our world. It gave us a perspective that previously had been only imagined. Realization of these events has led to the understanding of planetary carrying capacity: a concept positing that there is a finite amount of resources, including potable water, fresh air, food, and energy, that are necessary to manage and sustain human habitation now and in the future.

According to the United Nations Commission on Population and Development, global life expectancy increased from age 65 in 1994 to 70 in 2014.⁵ There is a planetary shift in population distribution from rural to urban areas. The developed world became mostly urban around 2009, and developing regions, including Africa and Asia, which are still mostly rural today, are projected to have more people living in urban than rural areas by 2030. Cities are focal points of economic growth, innovation, cultural functions, and paid employment. Rural areas provide agriculture, recreation, species habitation, and preservation of natural reserves. Yet, this bifurcation is cause for many challenges, and has a tremendous impact on the forms of habitation appropriate for these differing environments. Modernity’s legacy manifests innumerable benefits as well as devastating assaults. We are a global culture: connected, mobile, and interdependent with improved living standards, health, life expectancy, production efficiency, agricultural practices, and tremendous advancements in technology. Yet the unintended consequences of many of these achievements threaten our contemporary ways of life, as evidenced by the increasing effects of climate change and species extinction. Growth by gross addition might be better achieved through intelligent multiplication of populations in sync with the carrying capacities of our local ecological regions.

You encounter a new event – a severe flood, a storm that floods the city, a fracking corporation rumbling into your neighborhood, an oil pipeline projected for your area, water bubbling up from storm pipes onto streets, a devastating hurricane that breaks through flimsy bulwarks built for another era. Now you become ready to rethink and connect.⁶

Placelessness

Placelessness pervades the contemporary built environment with its soulless qualities that anesthetize the senses. It is characterized by monolithic concrete surfaces, spatial incongruity, lack of human scale, devoid of any redeeming meaning, falling into disrepair, and absent of living things. According to geographer Edward Relph, it is a less authentic attitude that is the “casual eradication of distinctive places and the making of standardized landscapes that results from insensitivity to the significance of place.”⁷ Placelessness manifests in different ways within the varying territories: urban, suburban, exurban, and the interstitial network environments connecting them all.

Placelessness is one of the negative by-products of urbanism. It can occur everywhere but most often is found in urban areas, particularly those in decline or neglect. Placelessness is pervasive there, as previously functioning parts fall into disrepair and decrepitude, caused by changing population and urban migration patterns, zoning and political redistricting, restructuring, such as highway insertions through discrete neighborhoods, political disenfranchisement, unemployment, and high rates of crime. Often caused by external events, the aftereffect in economic changes and then social conditions result in decay, blight and dereliction. According to phenomenologist Christian Norberg-Schulz, it becomes “flatscape,” lacking in authenticity and intentional depth with mediocre experiences.⁸ Characteristics of placelessness include inauthenticity, monotony, uniformity, scalelessness, soullessness, and lacking diversity and the presence of nature.

Placelessness is a geographic territory devoid of four important ingredients necessary for healthy human habitation: diversity, authenticity, meaning, and nature. According to Relph, placelessness i...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• About the author
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• Part I Theoretical framework for serene urbanism
• Part II Serenbe: A community among the trees
• Index