7

What is Uban Density

The problem of urban design today antispace as a predominantspatial typology is essen

tial contemporaryurban design practice.
in

In today's cities, designers are faced with the chal Every modern city has an amazing amount of

lenge of creating outdoor environments as collec vacant, unused land in its downtown corehundreds

tive, unifying frameworks for new development. of acres in most major American cities. For instance in

Too often the designer's contribution becomes an Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, there are 4,930 acres of

after-the-fact cosmetic treatment of spaces that are industrial land, 260 acres of underutilized railroad

ill-shaped and ill-planned for public use in the first land, and 17.5 miles of riverfront available for rede

place. The usual process of urban development velopment today within the city boundaries. As the
treats buildings as isolated objects sited in the land movement to suburbia during the fifties and sixties

scape, not as part of the larger fabric of streets, drew industry and people to the periphery, previously
squares, and viable open space. Decisions about viable downtovwn land became desert. Over the past

growth patterns are made from two-dimensional few years, radically changing economic, industrial,
land-use plans, without considering the three and employment patterns have further exacerbated
dimensional relationships between buildings and the problem of lost space in the urban core. This is

spaces and without a real understanding of human especially true along highways, railroad lines, and
behavior. In this all too common process, urban waterfronts, where major gaps disrupt the overall

space is seldom even thought of as an exterior vol- continuity of the city form. Pedestrian links between
ume with properties of shape and scale and with important destinations are often broken, and walking
connections to other spaces. Therefore what emerges is frequently a disjointed, disorientingexperience. It is

in most environmental settings today is unshaped important first to identify these gaps in spatial conti

antispace. nuity, then to fillthem with a frameworkof buildings

The approachproposed in between

this text falls and interconnected open-space opportunities that
the design of site-specific buildings and that of the will generate new investment. ldentification of the

urban land-use plan. It is centered on the concept gapsand overall patterns of development opportuni
of urbanism as an essential attitude in urban design, ties should be done before any site-specific architec

favoring the spatially connected public environment ture or landscape architecture is designed and as a key
over the mere master planning of objects on the element in urban land-use planning.
landscape. This approach calls for making figurative Designers of the physical environmenthave the

space out of the lost landscape. As professionals who unique training to address these critical problems of
permanently influence the urban environment, archi our day, and we can contribute significantly toward
tects,urban planners, and landscape architects have restructuring the outdoor spaces of the urban core.
a major responsibility to meet the challenge of Lost spaces, underused and deteriorating, provide
redesigning lost emerged over the
spaces that have exceptional opportunities to reshape an urban cen

last five decades or so in most major Americanand ter, so that it attracts people back downtown and
European cities. Understanding the concept of counteracts sprawl and suburbanization.

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64 Urban Design Reader

Lost space defined tremendousopportunities to the designer for urban

redevelopment and creative infill and for rediscover
What exactly is lost space and how does it differ ing the many hidden resources in our cities.
from positive urban space, or 'found' space? Lost
space is the leftover unstructured landscape at the
base of high-rise towers or the unused sunkenplaza The causes
away from the flow of pedestrian activity in the city.

Lost spaces are the surface parking lots that ring the There are five major factors that have contributed to
urban core of almost all American cities and sever lost space in our cities: (1) an increased dependence
the connection between the commercial center and on the automobile; (2) the attitude of architects of

residential areas. They are the no-man's-lands along the Modern Movement toward open space; (3) zon
the edges of freeways that nobody cares about main- ing and land-use policies of the urban-renewal period
taining, much less using. Lost spaces are also the that divided the city; (4) an unwillingness on the part

abandoned waterfronts, train yards, vacated military of contemporary institutions-public and private -to
sites, and industrial complexes that havemoved out assume responsibility for the public urban environ
to the suburbs for easier access and perhaps lower ment;and (5) an abandonment of industrial, military,

taxes. They are the vacant blight-clearance sites or transportation sites in the inner core of the city.

remnantsof the urban-renewal days -thatwere, for

a multitude of reasons, never redeveloped. They are
The automobile
the residual areas between districts and loosely com
posed commercial strips that emerge without any Of allthese factors, dependence on the automobile
one realizing it. Lost spaces are deteriorated parks is the most difficult to deal with, since it is so deeply
and marginal public-housing projects that have to ingrained the American way of life. It has resulted
in

be rebuilt because they do not serve their intended in an urban environment in which highways, thor
purpose. Generally speaking, lost spaces are the oughfares, and parking lots are the predominant
undesirable urban areas that are in need of redesign types of open space.
antispaces, making no positive contribution to the Mobility and communicationhave increasingly
surroundings or users. They are ill-defined, without dominated public space, which has consequently lost

measurable boundaries, and fail to connect elements much of its cultural meaning and human purpose.
in a coherent way. On the other hand, they offer A staggering percentage of urban land in major

FIGURE 7.1

Washington, D.C.
Aerial Photograph.
Valuable urban lands
are often given over
to the excessive

movement and
storage of
automobiles.
(Courtesy: Marvin I.

Adleman)
TEAM LinG
 What is lost space? 65

modern cities is devoted to the storage and move How did thishappen? Designers and builders
ment of automobiles-in Los Angeles and Detroit as influenced by the Modern Movement abandoned
much as 75 to 80 percent. Partly because of this, principles of urbanism and the human dimension
buildings are separated, encompassedby vast open of outdoor space established in the urban design of

areas without social purpose. Streets, no longer cities of the past.The profile of the Medieval or
essential urban spaces for pedestrian use, function Renaissance city, our most important historic urban
as the fastest automobile link, regardless of social design models, is generally low and horizontal, and
cost. At the outskirts of the city the street has there is usually a close connection betweenlife inside
become the 'strip,' the square a parking lot framed the buildings and activity on the street. With the
by unrelated buildings. advent of the mechanical elevator and new technolo
gies of construction, the modern city has become an
environment of high-rise towers removed from street
Modern Movement in design life. Activities on the streets of Manhattan have little
Also contributing to lost outdoor space was the to do with the functions of the high-rises above.
Modern Movement in architectural design. At its The social and commercial role of the traditional
zenith from 1930 to about 1960, this movement was street has been further undermined by such Modern

founded on abstract ideals for the design of free- Movement design features as enclosed malls, mid
standing buildings;in the process it ignored or denied block arcades, and sunken or raised plazas. These
the importance squares and
of street space, urban have siphoned shopping and entertainment off the
gardens, and other important outdoor rooms. street, which no longer functions as a gathering place.

In the Piazza Navona District of Rome, streets and The modern city dweller is forced to create a social
square are carved out of the building mass, giving life on personal, controllable territory instead of
direction and continuity to urban life and creating engaging in a communal existence centered around
physical connections, meaningful places. In Houston, the street. As a consequence, individual attitudes
Texas, on the other hand, the urban form consists of toward the use of urban space have been radically
separate buildings floating among parking lots and altered.

roadways. An identifiable ring of lost space encircles With the loss of a collective sense of the meaning
the urban core and spatially segregates surrounding of public space, we have also lost the sense that
residential areas-atypical pattern of most American there are rules for connecting parts through the
cities (fig. 7.3). design of outdoor space. In the traditional city, the

FIGURE 7.2
Washington, D.C.
Diagram of the same
site as fig 7.1)

showinghow
roadways and parking
lotshave destroyed
the consistency of the
urban fabric. Without
the paved surfaces
buildings have little if

any relationship to
one another.

TEAM LinG
66 Urban Design Reader

FIGURE 7.3

Diagram of the Form

of the Typical
American City.
The high-rise core
(hatched area) is
surrounded by a belt
of parking lots and

highways created
during urban renewal
(stippled areas)a
ringof lost space that
segregates downtown
from residential
neighborhoods. This
diagram is based on
form of downtown
the
Syracuse, New York.

rules were clear. Buildings were subordinate to the frame of reference in city design. Renewed interest
more powerful collective realmto an implicit in historicism and the traditional city, which were
vocabulary and a deference to the larger
of design neglected by the Modernists, has reintroduced the
order of things.The 'mannersand rules of a place grammar of ornament, metaphor, and style, which
gave instructions on how to connect. One of the can reunite the many aspects of building as an art
challenges to urban design in our times is to rede responsive to the larger issues of contemporary
velop a sense for the rules and, doing so, to bring society.

back some richness and variety to public life

important ingredients in cities of the past.

Zoning and urban renewal
In criticizing the form of the modern city, the
intention not to imply that the architecture and
is The loss of traditional qualities of urban space has
urban design of the last half-century has been an also been the result of zoning policies and urban
utter failureor that the works of many great design- renewal projects implemented during 1950s the
ers should be rejected out of hand. Functionalism, and 1960s.These closely allied approaches to plan
which laidthe groundworkfor our loss of traditional ning were well-interntioned,if ultimately misguided,
space, became obsessed with efficiency, but, like any responses to urban decay. The impulse was to clear
great historical movement, it was most concerned the ground, sanitize, and promote human welfare
with meaningsand the problem of giving man an through the segregation of land uses into discrete
existential foothold. The ethics of modernism have zones and the substitution of high-rise towers for

proved inadequate, and its synthetic vision and pre ground-level density. Urban-renewal projects rarely

emptive dogma no longer constitute the dominant corresponded in spatial structure to the evolved

TEAM LinG
 What is lost space? 67

community pattern they replaced, nor did they appropriated spaces, usually severed from an histor

respond to the social relationshipsthat gave mean ical context.

ing to community existence. Zoning legislation had As government has become more departmental
the effect of separating functions that had often ized and private interests more segregated from
been integrated. Discrete districts segregated living public, the feeling that there is a frameworkof com

space from working space. Isolated 'superblocks' mon concern has been lost. Competition between a

formed by urban-renewal plans closed off historic fragmented system of government decision mak

streets, drastically affecting the scale of the city. ing, bureaucratic regulations, community participa
Abstract notions of compatible uses created urban tion, and the sacred cow of private money, together
areas that could no longer accommodate physical with a mayoral scramble for limited federal tax dol

or social diversity, and that therefore were no longer lars, has made a shambles of the orderly interrelation

truly urban. Both zoning and urban renewal substi- ship of a city's buildings,open spaces, and circulation.

tuted functional for spatial order and failed to rec Further, the institutional neglect of the public realm
ognize the importanceof spatial order to social is a monumental problem both because of minimal
function. investment in maintaining public space and a gen
eral lack of interest in controlling the physical form
and appearance of the city. In any redesign of urban
Privatization of public space
spacethe conflict between public good and private
The sanctity of private enterprise has also contributed gain must be resolved.
significantly to lost space in our urban centers. While
theeconomic health of a city strengthens its down
town,it also creates a heavy demand for floor space in Changing land use
the cente, thereby pushing toward the vertical city.
The final major cause of lost space has been the per
A byproduct has been the appropriation of public
vasive change in land use in most American cities
spacefor private expression. Each site is seen as a
over the past two decades. The relocation of indus
place for 'image buildings as a potential corporate
try, obsolete transportation facilities, abandoned
flagship. The very idea of modestly fitting into the col
military properties and vacated commercial or resi
lective city is antithetical to corporate aspirations and
dential buildings have created vast areas of wasted
the chest-beating individualism of the American way.
or underused space within the downtown core of
We have transformed the city of collective spaces
many cities. These sites offer enormous potential for
into a city of private icons. Regulations intended to
reclamation as mixed-use areas, especially since the
define the broader urban vocabulary and to govern
exodus from the inner city seemsto be reversing.The
individual projects are regularly waived if they do
obsolete shipping or rail yard frequently occupies a
not suit the whims of the particular developer. The
desirable waterfront site. The abandoned ware
continuities of streets are broken by ill-placed build
house, factory, or wholesale outlet may have attrac
ings, height ordinances are frequently violated, and
tions as centrally located, architecturally interesting,
varied materials and facade styles compete stridently
and relatively inexpensive housing. Vacant land can
for attention. The city becomes a showplacefor the
be temporarily used for productive urban gardens,
private ego at the expense of the public realm.
commercial horticulture, or neighborhood play
In cities of the past, the designs for streets,
grounds. For the developer, advantages in reusing
squares, parks,and other spaces in the public realm
such sites are obvious; however, the contribution
were integrated with the design of individual build
that well-conceived spatial changes might make to
ings. 'Standards for the integration of architecture
the urban fabric of the entire city offers social advan
and urban spaces were set by the patrons and
tages that go far beyond those of economic gain.
builders of the Renaissance that model society
architects should take as their most important
precedent." But in the modern city, each element is

the responsibility of a different public or private Redesigning lost space

organization, and the unity of the total environment
is lost. Various developmentand urban-renewal proj The five factors we have discussedthehighway, the
ects are, by and large, put together separately, with Modern Movement in architecture, urban renewal
out an overriding plan for public space. The result is and zoning,competition for image on the part of
a patchworkquilt of private buildings and privately private enterprise, and changing patterns of land

TEAM LinG
68 Urban Design Reader

use in the inner city-have, then, together created One of the major requirements therefore is to
the dilemma of modern urban space. Most striking design environments which individual buildings
in

has been the unwillingness or inability of public insti are integrated with exterior public space so that the
tutions to control the appearanceand physical struc- physical form of the city does not fall victim to sep
ture of the city. This has resulted in the erosion of a aration caused either by zoning or by a dictatorial
collective frameworkand visual illiteracy among the circulation system. How can we do this -how can
public. The governmentmust institute strong policies we give structure to our urban spaces so that they
for spatial design, the public must take part in shaping provide a unifying framework for groups of build
its surroundings, and designers must understand the ings of disparate architectural form and style? In
principles underlying successful urban space. order to find the answer, we should look closely at

In order to address the lost-space question, the traditional city, particularly at the principle of

designers should create site plans that become gen enclosure that gives open space
definition and
its

erators of context and buildings that define exterior connection, creating workable between spaces
links

space rather than displace it. In a successful city, well (fig. 7.4). We need to return to the theories and
defined outdoor spaces are as necessary as good models of urban space that worked in the past and
buildings, and the landscape architect, in concert to develop a design vocabulary based on these suc
with architects and planners, should contribute to cessful precedents for today's cities. Maybe we finally
their creation. have to understand that history and environment
The history of city design shows that exterior
urban space, if conceived of as figural volume rather
than structurelessvoid, can reverse the unworkable
"figure-ground' relationships between buildings
and open spaces of the modern city. A lesson we
can learn from traditional, preindustrial, cities is that

exterior space should be the force that gives defini

tion to the architecture at its borders, establishing
the walls of the outdoor room. People's image of
and reaction to a space is largely determined by the
way it is enclosed. People like rooms.They relate to
them daily in their homes and at work. This prob
ably explains why tourists and residents enjoy the
structured urban rooms of Europe in cities such as Traditional City Form
Rome, Venice, and Paris or the garden rooms of Villa
Lante, Vaux-le-Vicomte, and Versailles.
In urban design the emphasis should be on the
groups and sequences of outdoor rooms of the
dis
trict as a whole, rather than on the individual space as
an isolated entity. Special attention should be given
to the residual spaces between districts and the
wasteland at their edges. We need to reclaim these
lost spaces by transforming them into opportunities
for development; infill and recycling can incorporate
such residual areas into the historic fabric of the city.

Existing public plazas, streets, and parking lots that

Modern City Form
are presently dysfunctional and incompatible with
their contexts can be transformed into viable open FIGURE 7.4
spaces. These design and development strategies can Traditional and modern urban form. These drawings
also provide the impetus to attract people back to illustratethe spatial structure of traditional cities
the center. By identifying lost spaces in the city as (above) and the fragmentary form of the modern city
(below). In the traditional city, urban blocks direct
opportunities for creative infill, local governments movement and establish orientation; in the modern
can allocate funding to stimulate private investment
city, the fragmentary and confused structure creates
through 'enterprise zones' and other community disorientation. (Drawing based on diagrams by Rob
development programs. Krier)

TEAM LinG
 What is lost space? 69
are the two faces of architecture, that no building Notes
stands alone':s 'and that architectural solutions how
ever brilliant cannot overcome the limitations of the 1. Urban Design nternational Conference Syllabus.

urban fabric which they are placed.

in
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Oct., 1984.
2. Jaquelin Robertson, Harvard University GSD Lectures,
We have introduced the importance of the out Dec. 4, 1981.
door environment as a social and physical space 3. Harry Cobb, Harvard University GSD Lectures, Dec. 4,
and some of the causes of its decline in the modern 1981.

4. James Steward Polshek, Preface in Deborah Dietsch

city.The most basic act in urban landscape design
and Susanna Steeneken, eds. Precis: Architecture in the
should be to establish frameworkof pub
the spatial
Public Realm. Columbia University Graduate School of
lic design 'rules' for streets,and open spaces
squares, Architecture and Planning, New York: Rizzoli
prior to the design of individual buildings. This code International Publications, Inc. Vol. 3. 1981, p. 3.

of rules should accommodate a diversity of building 5. Ada Louise Huxtable, The Troubled State of Modern

styles and forms. It should also express the rules of AD. 1/2, London, 1981, p. 16.
Architecture,'
6. Charles Jencks,Modern Movements in Architecture. New
scale and character for making coherent, visible con
York: Doubleday, 1973, p. 299.
nections between new and old uses, buildings, and 7. Robert Campbell, The Choice: Learn from the Past or
activities. It takes more than good architects and Fail in the Future.' The Boston Globe Magazine, Nov. 11,
landscape architects to create good cities; it takes 1984, p. 35.

good rules-rules that may not guarantee quality in

every instance, but that help prevent disasters. In

the end, the streets and squares of our cities

should Source and copyright
once again become spaces for social discourse, tak
ing precedence over the movement and storage of
automobiles.
The points stressed most strongly here are that
This chapter was published in

Trancik, R. (1986), What is

its

(1986), Finding Lost Space: Theories of Urban

original

Lost Space?",
form

in
as:

Trancik, .
Design,
an expertise in urban design can only be developed Van Nostrand Reinhold,New York, 1-20.
by: (1)studying historic precedents and the way in
Copyright 2007. Reprinted with permission of John
which modern space has evolved; (2) developing an Wiley & Sons,Inc.
understanding of the underlying theories of urban
spatial design; and (3) developing skills in synthesiz
ing and applying these in the design process.

Prankkkk

TEAM LinG