PART
ONE: Visual Order
As used in this paper, “visual order”
refers to a regulated appearance that conveys a defined social role for a given
space. This is not limited to the built
environment; it also includes public activities. Scott (1998; 133-4) has used the term in a much more narrow way
to mean “the tidy look of geometric order.”
My use is closer to Suttles’s (1984) “appearential order,” although he
does not define the term. With my
usage, built elements that appear discordant and activities that are socially
marked as “disorderly” stand in opposition to visual order. Security measures may help create visual
order, as described by Davis (1990), but these can also undermine that order
whenever they signal that the space is contested, leaving the defined use of
the space challenged. Spaces that use
social activities to regulate appearances and maintain control as prescribed by
Whyte (1988), on the other hand, may exhibit a stronger visual order, as their
use appears to be naturally defined.
Put simply, visual order is the coherence of what you see in the sweep
of the eye.
Focusing on the connection between
physical characteristics and social activities has been common in sociology
(Wilson and Kelling 1982, Sampson and Raudenbush 1999), but sociologists have
typically left their investigation at the point where visual order is
transgressed in the forms of graffiti, streetwalking, or loitering. Sampson and Raudenbush offer the following
explanation of disorder: “By
disorder… we refer not to disorganization but observable physical and social
cues that are commonly perceived to disturb the civil and unencumbered use of
public space.” (p. 611) Conversely, order is an absence of disruptive visual
cues.
From a concept first proposed by Albert
Hunter, Wilson and Kelling developed what is known as the “Broken
Windows” hypothesis. They argue that
visual disorder encourages criminal behavior, and this concept has become quite
influential in both policing and planning efforts. Although the “Broken Windows” hypothesis attempts to explain how
disorder affects social behavior, we should ask how acceptance of this argument
directs social behavior to enforce visual order. The “Broken Windows” argument is not complicated. In fact, it can be described as an attempt
to explain a socially normative view of marginal spaces as a sort of natural
law.
Sampson and Raudenbush (1999) criticize
the causation of the “Broken Windows” hypothesis, asserting that both visual
disorder and criminal behavior stem from ineffective social control within the
community. This redefinition is an
improvement, as we begin to see that visual character expresses social space
and its normative behaviors, such that visual disorder is the result of poorly
defined and enforced social uses.
Nevertheless, it continues to take a narrow view of the resulting
appearance by assuming that it is a naturally negative condition, rather than a
condition that becomes negative through its perception. This is perhaps most evident in their
treatment of loitering. What may appear
to people from many communities to be a sort of criminal shiftlessness may in
fact be an aspect of visual order for the local community as an accepted social
activity that defines the space.
It is important at this point to resist
the temptation to say that people in distressed communities want their
neighborhoods to look bad. Following
Sampson and Raudenbush, distressed communities look bad because their
fragmented social space undermines visual order. At the same time, we need to be careful about imposing exterior
standards to interpret visual order; some of what outsiders may think looks bad
may not look bad to the area’s residents.
Jane
Jacobs (1961) takes a different approach toward activities in public space, and
she has been influential in defining the current practice of planning. Scott (1998) portrays Jacobs as an opponent
of “visual order.” While her position
takes a different approach than that of the “Broken Windows” perspective,
Scott’s overly narrow definition of “visual order” causes him to miss a broader
picture. He states:
Diversity, cross-use, and complexity (both social and
architectural) are Jacobs’s watchwords. The mingling of residences with shopping areas and workplaces
makes a neighborhood more interesting, more convenient, and more
desirable—qualities that draw the foot traffic that in turn makes the street
relatively safe. The whole logic of her
case depends on the creation of crowds, diversity, and conveniences that define
a setting where people will want to be.
In addition, a high volume of foot traffic stimulated by an animated and
colorful neighborhood has economic effects on commerce and property values…
Scott’s own explanation
highlights the importance of maintaining particular visual aspects:
architectural complexity, crowds, and colorful neighborhoods. It is visual order, as coherence to this
animated neighborhood esthetic (in this case what some—Lewis Mumford comes to
mind—would call a Bohemian esthetic) that defines the “setting where people
will want to be.”
Duneier (1999) makes a similar comparison,
contrasting Jacobs to the “Broken Windows” hypothesis:
Although for Jacobs disorder serves many positive functions and
for Wilson and Kelling it does not, their approaches are only superficially
different in other ways. Both ask what
sorts of unintended consequences flow from particular sorts of publicly visible
practices.
(p. 158)
Jacobs really does not
argue in favor of disorder as much as she tries to redefine the dominant social
understanding of visual order. I do not
mean to reduce Jacobs’s work to a mere esthetic position, but rather to note
the visual aspects that play a strong role in her concept of good urban
neighborhoods. For Jacobs, the
appearance of space should be more lively and defined by local community
standards, whereas Wilson and Kelling argue for conformance to some sort of
mainstream standards. Both cases rely
on social control to maintain an appearance, even if the level of desired
control, diversity of activity, and the formality of enforcement are different.
The focus on public perception and
observable cues is central to our understanding of visual order. To clarify, however, the notion of
“unencumbered use” in Sampson and Raudenbush’s definition of disorder cannot be
understood as uncontested use, and it is necessary to ask for whom use is
unencumbered. As Deutsche (1996) has
pointed out, public space is always contested, although it is often controlled
in ways that do not attract attention.
Physical and Social Spaces
The
idea that space is interdependent with social relationships is not new. The notion has been present in sociology
since the inception of the urban ecology theories of the Chicago School. Park (1925) wrote:
The
ground plan of most American cities, for example, is the checkerboard. The unit
of distance is the block. This geometrical form suggests that the city is a
purely artificial construction which might conceivably be taken apart and put
together again, like a house of blocks.
The fact
is, however, that the city is rooted in the habits and customs of the people
who inhabit it. The consequence is that the city possesses a moral as well as a
physical organization, and these two mutually interact in a characteristic way
to mold and modify one another. It is the structure of the city which first
impresses us by its visible vastness and complexity. But this structure has its
basis, nevertheless, in human nature, of which it is an expression. On the
other hand, this vast organization which has arisen in response to the needs of
its inhabitants, once formed, imposes itself upon them as a crude external
fact, and forms them, in turn, in accordance with the design and interests
which it incorporates.
(p. 4)
The sociologists at the University of Chicago viewed communities
as social formations that were bounded by or coterminous with their physical
space. Communities were seen as the
cumulative result of individual behavior, and the sociologists soon focused on
the competition for resources as the primary formative behavior. (Suttles 1972) Since communities resulted from individual behavior and they
occupied fixed physical areas, many physical aspects of community areas
resulted from the competition for resources, giving rise to the concentric ring
model (Park and Burgess 1925).
The Chicago
School has been criticized for accepting “human nature” as a guiding force in
social interactions, which led them to undercut the role of social
constructions. Their conceptualization
of communities as physically bounded has also been criticized as a
shortcoming. (Hannerz 1980,
Venkatesh 2001, De Genova 1998)
Nevertheless, the emphasis on the cumulative results of individual
behavior retains relevance, as does the codependence of physical form and
social interactions.
Much of the
current direction for the discourse on space was set by Lefebvre (1975). He argues that it is not possible to talk
about space as some preexisting void that is filled by social activities, but
rather that space is created through social actions. Groups are intertwined in their social space, and every group
establishes places for itself in physical space. Lefebvre explains that “social relations of production have a
social existence to the extent that they have a spatial existence; they project
themselves into a space, becoming inscribed there, and in the process producing
that space itself.” (p. 129) His
concern is largely historical, however, rather than in tracing the processes of
spatial production, and he does not fully grasp the nature of urban
redevelopment. When he states: “The
diversion and reappropriation of space are of great significance, for they
teach us much about the production of new spaces,” (p. 168) he fails to
recognize that reappropriated spaces become
new spaces as they come to embody a different social space and are (at least to
some extent) physically destroyed and rebuilt.
While theorists recognize space as socially created,
they seem to treat place as some independently existing condition of
location. Reading commentaries on the
“experience of place,” (Hiss 1990) however, it becomes apparent that place is
also socially created, emerging from the social definition of space. I do not intend to outline historical
processes or transformations in this paper, but a brief explanation will
clarify this point. Both place and
space are social constructions. Before
the emergence of modernism they were largely coterminous, as social space did
not extend substantially beyond socially defined places. The dramatic extension of social spaces,
however, has outpaced the definition of place.
Ordering Activities
While it may sound unusual, given the
typical emphasis on the built environment, social activities are a central
element in the appearance of space.
Lynch (1960) made this point:
Moving elements in a city, and in particular the people and their
activities, are as important as the stationary physical parts. We are not simply observers of this
spectacle, but are ourselves a part of it, on the stage with the other
participants
(p. 2)
And as we have seen through the sociologists’ approach in the
“Broken Windows” discussion, social activities serve as visual cues. In The
Death and Life of Great American Cities, much of Jacobs’s success lies in
her ability to deal with sidewalk life as an esthetic phenomenon, using the
metaphor of dance. Likewise, in the
novel The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand
(1943), Dominique takes issue with uses that undermine the visual order of the
modernist buildings she champions.
Furthermore, Tschumi (1996) explains that
social activities become entwined with spaces.
Since activities that occur in a given space become part of the space
itself, any consideration of visual order will have to include the activities
that occur there.
The activities and physical space themselves are linked,
both functionally and esthetically. New
activities may demand that spaces be reconfigured, thereby altering their
appearance. Furthermore, different
esthetics approach the relationship between activities and the appearance of
space differently. The modernist
approach that prevailed during most of the 20th century is most
strongly described by the insistence of Louis Sullivan (1901-1902) that the
form of a building should reflect its function, while New Urbanists
have recently tried to recreate the appearance of traditional neighborhoods to
replicate the positive social interactions they observe there.
Foucault (1975) is interested in the ways
power makes imposes discipline for social control, and he interprets the
regulation of space as such a means of control. This interpretation takes a somewhat narrow view when dealing
with space, focusing almost exclusively on the way places are designed to allow
public scrutiny, rather than looking at the regulation of spaces through the
interaction of appearance and social identification. His is by no means a shallow contribution, and puts into perspective
Jacobs’s (1961) “eyes on the street,” design suggestions by Whyte (1988), and
some of the hostile aspects of design identified by Davis (1990).
But groups invest efforts in the design of
space in ways that do not contribute simply to visibility or social control;
the regulation of appearances helps to both represent and form identity, so we
will take an in-depth look at the role of identity.
Identity
Lynch (1960) indicated
that community identities are tied to visual characteristics, establishing some
connection between identity and place, and between neighborhoods and visual
order. His observation that hard edges
create separate areas provides some insight into the role of space in the
formation of identity. As spatial
boundaries divide neighborhoods, and people identify themselves with their
neighborhood, spatial boundaries lead to the development of identity. Beyond the ruptures in urban fabric created
by major borders, Lynch also noted class differences in decorative elements
that differentiate areas (p. 165-7).
This suggests that place-based identities may develop through spatial
boundaries, while other identities such as class and race may imprint
themselves in physical space, although he did not draw it out. Fainstein (2001) asserts the point: “[The]
built environment structures social relations, causing commonalities of gender,
sexual orientation, race, ethnicity, and class to assume spatial identities.”
(p. 1)
We also need to
recognize that administrative boundaries play a role in both the creation of
identity and the emergence of distinct visual orders. Community identities form through contests over resources, and
the administrative bodies develop their own identities based on their
organizational structure and the personalities of the people who lead
them. The competition between
departments within an administrative structure can also lead to differences.
(Allison 1971) Thus, in addition to
developing its own identifiable landscaping styles, the Parks Department in New
York pasts its leaf symbol on all the spaces it maintains.
Drawing on the work of his colleague Morris Janowitz, Suttles explains
“[P]eople tend to live in more than one community of limited liability and to
have many different adversaries or partners in maintaining more than one
corporate identity.” (1972; p. 59)
Observations of identities supported by consumer items and their
associated images have also noted multiple identities. These observations of consumption view
shopping as an activity where people try on potential identities as much as
they are evaluating the fit of a new shirt.
(Shields 1992)
Identity is a combination of conformity and exclusion that enables
individuals to situate themselves in relationship to others, generally
according to socially defined roles.
This is partially a choice, it is also largely a matter of imposition,
but it is not static. The
characteristics that are relevant differ as context changes. At Oktoberfest, I can assume a German
identity that I have loosely inherited from my mother, while on Saint Patrick’s
Day I can take on an Irish identity, if I care to stretch my father’s
background. By dressing all in black,
smoking a lot, and trying not to let my goofy laugh out, I could adopt the
identity of an existentialist.
Nevertheless, when I walk around in predominantly black neighborhoods on
the South Side of Chicago, my identity is that of a white man, regardless of
the choices I make.
It thus follows that space plays a role in determining the relevant
identity for an individual. To some
extent this would have to be so; as Suttles noted in a conversation on the
topic, you have to go somewhere else to be someone else. Moreover, as varying types of consumer items
are concentrated in particular areas, people in different locations may conform
to different images, and they may shift from one identity to another depending
on the prevalence of whichever image dominates in the immediate context. Furthermore, Suttles has observed that
comparisons play a strong role: “[L]ike individuals, cities get to know what
they are and what is distinctive about them from the unified observation of
others.” (1984, p. 285) Conflicts also
involve outsiders in the formation of identity: “Identities become defensible
by having to be defended.” (p. 291)
It
is important to recognize that exercising control over the visual character of
an area is not simply a case of exerting enough power to subdue contending
voices. Rather, areas become
specialized and exhibit forms of cooperation.
One of Suttles observations in The Social Order of the Slum (1968)
illustrates this:
Within the area there area a few business places that specialize in
ethnic products that have become popular with members of other ethnic
groups. Within these establishments
outsiders are treated as “guests” and must take the part of someone who
appreciates the product and has come there for that special purpose. Like guests everywhere, however, they must
show respect for the establishment and concede to its practices rather than
force their own.
(p. 49-50)
Applied to the question of
appearance, this helps explain why many city districts, and ethnic
neighborhoods in particular, often maintain thriving tourist businesses, and
why they are not subject to the same visual controls as other
neighborhoods. Because people enjoy the
distinct experiences of contact with other identities, they may be willing to
cede control over its appearance and identification to others.
Questions concerning exclusion, however, have been ongoing and have
periodically been central to bursts of political turmoil. Because of the importance of exclusion in
planning, it is worthwhile to note that this is achieved precisely within the
correlation between space and identity.
The accepted image of an area may endorse identities, most notably race,
that cannot be adopted by everyone.
These may be enforced through legal restrictions (similar to other legal
controls we will examine later) or through less formal means. Many of these means rely on various visual
cues as implicit means of suggestion or enforcement; ultimately, they all seek
to control who has the right to be visible within the space in question.
As class or racial
identities shape the physical environment, they in turn can become reinforced
as place-based identities, bringing social reproduction together with the
production of urban space (Lefebvre 1975; Harvey 1985).
Marxists have long expressed interest in
the class-oriented organization of space.
The appearances of urban spaces controlled by the middle class were a
concern for Engels (1845). He described
the difference between the unsightly working class districts hidden behind the
attractive avenues that carried bourgeois commuters. Engels noted that the bourgeoisie consolidated a middle class
appearance within its own space. His
concern was primarily in the way that the bourgeoisie exploited the working
class, supposedly to maintain this appearance, and he expanded little beyond
this observation.
This observation is repeated by Revell (1992), concerning
the inception of zoning controls in New York. Talking about the Fifth Avenue merchants, he explains:
The
association was founded in 1908 by a group of merchants and real estate owners
seeking to preserve the genteel appearance and economic value of Fifth Avenue –
the city’s high-class shopping district.… Garment workers, they said, differed
from shoppers, from retail clerks, and from office workers, and those
differences changed the character of the retail district below Thirty-fourth
Street.
(p. 29)
The Fifth Avenue Association attempted to regulate the
appearance of the street in order to maintain control over it. While they regulated aspects such as the
height of buildings for health and esthetic considerations, the merchants were
largely interested in manipulating economics to price out the garment workers,
thereby maintaining the exclusive class appearance of the people on the street.
Jager (1986) elaborates
further on the Marxist approach, describing gentrification in Melbourne,
Australia as a class-motivated process of regulating visual order. Jager indicates that gentrification follows
an esthetic norm, or “kitsch,” which reflects and enables the formation of an
urban middle class. He explains that
decisions concerning the appearance of houses are made to demonstrate class
standing, rather than to express individual esthetic taste, stating “It is not
the esthetic itself but the social distinction it evokes which is achieved in
the display of kitsch.” (p. 87) This
“kitsch” marks entire gentrified areas, producing a visual order of class domination.
Jager further suggests
that gentrifiers use the Victorian style in an attempt to control the use of
history. I find this interpretation of
the stylistic choice too constraining, as it essentially negates the possibility
that anyone actually likes the way those houses look. History does play an important role in urban space, though,
through the way it is understood in the present, so we will turn our attention
to collective consciousness.
Collective Consciousness
Before discussing collective consciousness itself, we
should look briefly at its space.
Although difficult to rigidly define, there is a difference between
collective and individual space. Collective spaces can become more contentious
in terms of the identity that they embody, since people must determine how they
will be jointly recognized, which is to say what kind of place they should
become. Such a distinction is difficult
to make, however, because supposedly individual spaces are often constitutive
of collective space; an individual’s home may frame a public place, for
example. There are externalities to
individual appearance, and this is, in fact, one of the bases for the
regulation of visual order. This
results in an interesting sort of dialog, as individual spaces encompass both personal
and collective identities.
Additionally, certain important centers of collective spaces—like
churches or governmental buildings—are visually regulated apart from the rest
of their surroundings.
As a central element of collective space,
collective consciousness plays a powerful role in regulating visual order. Individual memories are not entirely
separate from collective consciousness, since much of what we remember is
conditioned by the contexts in which we have recalled it and how we have heard
it explained by others. Nevertheless,
strong, individual recollections will obtain.
In most cases these are unlikely to affect the appearance of a place,
unless they are shared with others (precisely as collective consciousness) or
if the individual is in a position of particular power.
The distinction
between individual memories and collective consciousness may not even seem to
matter in the context of places that are collectively experienced. It would seem that everyone would have
experienced the same appearance. That
assumption could become problematic, however, as individuals vary in age, and
people who were not part of the space in earlier periods bring memories from
elsewhere. These may motivate them to
approach the appearance of places differently, as well as introducing
additional impressions that interact in the creation of collective
consciousness.
The concept of
collective consciousness has grown from the theories of Durkheim (2001 [1912]),
based on his anthropological work on native religions in Australia. His formulation recognized the role of
“lasting things” in providing continuity to sentiments and the role of symbols
in bridging the distance between individuals that is necessary for groups of
people to form a collective identity. He
described the connection between material form and social space:
Expressing social unity in a material
form makes it more tangible to everyone; for this reason the use of emblematic
symbols must have quickly spread once the idea took shape. Moreover, this idea must have sprung
spontaneously from the conditions of common life, for the emblem is not only a
convenient method of clarifying society’s awareness of itself, it actually
creates this feeling: it is a basic element of this feeling.
(p. 175)
We can directly recognize the relationship between social space
and physical space within Durkheim’s observations of collective
consciousness. Additional observations
by others fill in our outline of the connections between collective
consciousness and visual order.
Hartigan (1999) describes a somewhat more
nuanced gentrification process than the one provided by Jager, whereby
professional whites in a Detroit neighborhood confer to create an esthetic
consensus in the rehabilitation of their 19th century homes. He
further notes that while the black neighborhood residents in the area may also
fix up their homes, they do not share the nostalgia for recreating the period
of the homes’ construction, and the Maltese, who compare it to the history of
their homeland, refuse to recognize the period as historic at all. His observations expose class, racial, and
ethnic identities shaping the appearance of the neighborhood, and it is
suggestive that blacks do not share in the nostalgia for the heyday of the
neighborhood, from which they were excluded.
In his study of local community protest in
a black community in Queens, Gregory (1998) states:
[T]he
construction of identity is a political process, implicating a range of social,
economic, and cultural practices and locations, it is a deeply historical one
as well.… People recollect and rework
the past through social practices of memory that bring the meanings of the past
to bear on conditions in the present.
These practices of memory shape the formation of collective identities. (p. 13)
History, which is imbedded and readable in the built environment,
plays a role in the formation of identity and affects the regulation of visual
order. Gregory elaborates on the role of collective consciousness:
[I]n reading the signs of neighborhood—the sites of struggle,
sacrifice, achievement, and defeat—Hayes was also constructing a community
identity: a we who organized to get this public school, who fought for
traffic lights at this crossing, who
mortgaged our homes to build this church.
(p. 144)
This raises questions regarding the importance of appearance;
residents might identify their space through collective consciousness rather
than attaching significance to its appearance.
It seems more likely, however, that memory and appearance combine as
memories are rooted in the appearance of the neighborhood. Williams (1991) noted that communities’
demands for historic preservation often favor visible elements in preference to
less visible resources, even though the latter may be more historically
significant.
Residents evaluate actions affecting the
appearance of space in relation to the way they remember and understand it, and
when making changes they will consider both its current and previous
appearance. It is also important to keep
in mind as Williams observed, that collective consciousness may not be based on
historical fact, but rather on a shared understanding, or collective myth, of
the community’s past. Moreover, he
explains: “The preservation laws have become part of the tactical arsenal
available to residents as they struggle to retain a modicum of control over the
character of their neighborhoods.” (p. 94)
Likewise, Suttles
(1984) argues:
[J]ournalism, novel writing, politics, and advertising would be
impossible arts if our images of cities had to conform closely to their
wavering realities. For this purpose,
the heyday of local capitalism serves as the fixed line against which
contemporary events can be evaluated, interpreted, treated as a trend line, or
discounted as an exception. What is
said is not lies but a selective reading of the present in the light of an
altogether believable past.
(p. 248)
As activities that bear on the realities of cities, these efforts
help to stabilize conditions by encouraging them to conform to set images. And by encouraging conformity to particular
images, the community leaders help promote coherent appearances for urban
spaces. Past periods of affluence in
particular, which serve as points of reference, play a role in negotiating these
appearances.
Suttles also
explains:
Indeed, probably only a few of these collective representations
penetrate popular awareness in the sense that they are stored in rote
memory. The more likely case is one
where people are able to recognize an apt characterization by finding its
resemblance to a few others that are known.
(p. 295)
Thus, common understandings of the
community and its relationship to history help form identity and influence
actions concerning the appearance of space.
These actions are weighed against memories of changes in the landscape
and previous periods of splendor. This
allows history to be manipulated to regulate the appearance of space in order
to serve other interests. We now turn
our attention to focus on the processes that regulate visual order.
PART TWO: Processes
While existing theory indicates relatively
clearly that the appearance of space is tied to social use and identity, the
actual processes that bind them together have remained obscure. We can identify economics, legal controls,
and the destruction of space as regulatory processes, all of which depend on a
political process to set their agenda and to coordinate between them.
Economics
The
discourse on economics has largely been polarized into neo-classical and Marxist
camps, both of which seem intent on highlighting the differences and
deficiencies of the other interpretation rather than incorporating its
insightful elements. Thus, Marxists
inscribe overly narrow definitions to neo-classical economic theory, while
their counterparts have generally failed to account for socially-valued aspects
that are difficult to quantify. The
observations of class-based interests and collective actions are not
fundamentally inimical to the economic framework used by neo-classical
economists, however. Economists use
utility curves to represent the benefits individuals derive from different
combinations of goods and services.
While analyses have generally focused in on monetary measures, leading
many to criticize economists for their disregard for social questions, utility
curves theoretically include all the benefits received, whether monetary,
environmental, emotional, or whatnot.
By pushing the inquiry into the formation of utility curves (Becker 1974), it would be possible to
study how social processes shape demand without losing the analytical power of
economics. A rigorous investigation of
utility curves is well beyond the scope of this study. Nevertheless, we will look at examples of
how social factors influence demand, implying a role in shaping utility
curves. Hopefully this will provide a
framework for future investigations.
Jager (1986), taking a Marxist economic
approach, describes a tension within gentrification between “form and
function.” While gentrifiers value the
Victorian “form,” they find the
“functions” of modern conveniences necessary, denying the historical
purity of the house.
The Victorian esthetic had its limits; it legitimates but cannot
be allowed to compromise the economic investment. Hence the uneasy recognition in housing advertisements themselves
that this esthetic can never be fully realized…
(p. 85)
This description of “the uncomfortable
combination of the economic and social functions of urban conservation—the
necessity to produce profit and
social distinction,” (p. 87, italics in the original) is inadequate, as it
creates an artificial separation between economics and “social functions.” When talking about “producing profit,” or
“economic investment,” Jager seems to mean the value from the physical usage of
the house as well as the return from its resale, but excludes the value derived
from the social uses of the home. Thus,
he includes exchange value, but excludes any portion of the use value he views
as supporting class difference. Also,
by interpreting economics and esthetics as separate processes, he fails to
recognize that esthetics is an element included within the economic
process. This is fundamentally a flaw
resulting from the Marxist preoccupation with production and class-consciousness,
which inhibits it from inquiring into demand.
This can be better understood by
introducing some concepts from neo-classical economics. In this case, it would be more accurate to
explain conflicts between esthetics and modern conveniences by saying that
other characteristics of the house are valued more highly than the esthetics,
or that the marginal increase in convenience is valued more than the marginal
increase in social status.
With this approach we see that value is
derived from social uses as well as the inherent material use. It is the socially derived portion of the
value that interests us in the regulation of visual order. As different appearances gain different
values priced along social lines, the economic system will help regulate the
appearance of space along both cultural and class lines, as people who value a
particular appearance, and are able to pay the price, pay some additional
amount for that appearance. This
economic mechanism will only produce visual results to the extent that people
are willing and able to pay for the appearance.
Architects Duany et al. (2000) make practical observations
about the interaction of economics, legislative controls, and esthetics. Among the practices they employ in their New
Urban developments are restrictive codes, which place extra requirements in
addition to the local zoning.
Explaining their experience at Seaside, they write:
Colleagues
who complain to us about Seaside usually have two criticisms. The first is the
restrictiveness of the architectural code, and the second is the significant
number of overdecorated “gingerbread” cottages there. They are usually
surprised to learn that the gingerbread houses at Seaside demonstrate not the
requirements of the (largely style-neutral) code but the code’s inability to
overcome the traditional tastes of the American housing consumer. The only way
to wipe out the hated traditional architecture would have been to tighten the
hated code.
(p. 211)
According to Duany et al., the traditional homes in Seaside are a
manifestation of the dominant esthetic norm.
There are several interesting things to note here concerning both
economics and legislative controls in the form of development codes. The visual order is produced through the
“traditional tastes of the American housing consumer,” which work through an
economic process. By attributing the
result to consumer tastes, they indicate that architects and developers are
bound in their efforts to determine the visual character by what buyers are
seeking and willing to accept. By
referring to “the American housing consumer,” Duany identifies those seeking to
purchase a home as a coherent group with a collective esthetic preference. At least some architects and developers,
then, generate their designs to conform to the perceived preferences of their
target consumer group.
However, developers and architects also
market the spaces they produce, helping to change preferences for different
types of spaces. While marketing
provides information that enables buyers to find products they seek, it also
creates images that influence social values for spaces. When Duany writes a book like Suburban Nation, or makes a presentation
(“preaches to the masses” as my friend Dave Kantor described him after seeing
him in Sarasota, Florida) he tries to replace support for subdivisions with
enthusiasm for New Urbanist developments.
Likewise, Lefebvre (1975) theorized:
We may be sure that representations of space have a practical
impact, that they intervene in and modify spatial textures which are informed by effective knowledge and
ideology. Representations of space must
therefore have a substantial role and a specific influence in the production of
space. Their intervention occurs by way
of construction—in other words, by way of architecture…
(p. 42, italics in the original)
While social preferences direct the appearance of space through
consumer decisions, architects and developers are able to exert some control
over appearances by increasing demand with representations of space in the form
of advertisements and publications that change social preferences.
When discussing identity, we noted that
the uneven distribution of consumer goods through the urban landscape played a
role in identity formation. This
presents us with the importance of another economic mechanism: economies of
agglomeration. By grouping similar uses
together, economies of agglomeration both provides a form for existing social
distinctions, and can help to define additional ones as new consumption patterns
are spatially produced.
Economic constraints, such as the price discounts of purchasing from
the same supplier, can introduce visual distinctions between different
administrative areas. Government
funding can also provide a powerful dynamic that works to regulate visual
order. As we previously discussed,
administrative bodies will tend to develop their own identities and their
standard operating procedures will impose aspects of standardization. Providing funding adds an additional
component, as projects are required to involve the cooperation of different
groups and are subject to public review, drawing them inline with any strong
social norms for appearance.
Social dynamics operate on and through
economics, but it is important to keep in mind, as Park explained with the
city’s physical form, that while social dynamics shape economics, economics is
imposing constraints on social actions.
Thus we can look at how social values and representations of appearance
condition the economic process, but we need to be careful to recognize the
limits that economic exchange places on considerations of appearance and,
perhaps, how appearances with economic rationales might influence esthetic
tastes. Making a profit can outweigh
appearance; to the degree that visual nonconformance does not undermine profit,
appearance will not be regulated by economics (although the other mechanisms
may still hold sway). When efficiency
comes to serve as an esthetic in its own right, however, visual order is
recovered.
Legal Controls
Jager (1986) offers a Marxist explanation
of the use of legislative controls by gentrifiers, claiming that they are tools
used by the gentry to regulate visual order.
Traditional
middle-class mechanisms of status defense, such as the procuring of titles,
National Trust classifications and historic zoning, have been accompanied by
the securing of local-government posts and offices by the new gentry. The estheticization of the environment,
“saving the inner areas,” has been their historical mission.
(p.
90-91)
We can interpret “estheticization” as the imposition of a set of
regulated esthetic standards, resulting in visual order if successful. Any group effort for esthetic improvement
will require a commonly recognized set of visual criteria and some means for
enforcing them. Jager claims that the
middle class does this through historic zoning and affiliated building
protections, achieved through political means.
Revell’s (1992)
example of the Fifth Avenue merchants use of zoning to economically exclude
garment factories (and their workers) is another, albeit indirect, means of
using legislation to regulate visual order.
Much of Willis’s (1995) explanation of the
form of skyscrapers involves zoning controls.
Although she gives economics credit for determining critical aspects
like height, she shows that the form is essentially constrained by the zoning
envelope.
New Urbanist critics (Duany et al. 2000,
Kunstler 1996) claim that zoning does determine the form of communities, but
they argue that it prevents the creation of areas that have the visual
characteristics that people want and is thus opposed to social norms concerning
the appearance of space. Given that
legislation is socially produced, this seemingly creates a paradox; if social
norms claimed certain types of appearances, they would amend the zoning codes
to that end. Assuming that the zoning
codes do oppose social norms of
appearance, this would have to result from a conflict with other social
interests in the built environment, political domination removed from popular
opinion, or an unmovable municipal bureaucracy. Serious safety concerns, for example, could potentially lead to
the creation of spaces that are unattractive.
The regard for property rights also erects barriers, as the judiciary
prevents incursions that reach too far into the regulation of private
property. If narrow interest groups or
overly difficult regulations prevent zoning changes, it may also be possible
that zoning does not represent the social preferences of either the majority or
any particular group.
The assertion on
the part of the New Urbanists that (neo)traditional neighborhoods conform more
closely to social preferences is not correct, at least not entirely. The lush green lawns of the suburbs embody a
powerful esthetic that cannot be simply dismissed. There is no single “social preference.” While some people would prefer the esthetics of a New Urbanist
neighborhood, others would favor a broad front yard with pink lawn flamingos.
In practice, New Urbanists rely on legal controls to
achieve and protect visual order. While
the codes may be “largely style-neutral,” as Duany asserts, their essential
function is to create and enforce visual order by prohibiting designs that
might threaten, undermine, or challenge the visual character of the
neighborhood. I have been asked if
their real function isn’t protecting property values. That is quite likely the case, but as we see in the discussion of
economics, property values can only be threatened if an undermined visual order
is less valued by potential buyers.
Fancaviglia (1996) has noted a case that
applies more directly to the appearance of commercial space. Attempts to preserve the Main Street in many
American towns have resulted in sign ordinances:
the goal being a return to the more “tasteful” or less “obtrusive”
signage of the days when, paradoxically, there were no sign ordinances
whatsoever and the streetscape was, in reality, often marked by rather garish
signs that vied for people’s attention.
(p. 59)
Here we note an intersection between collective consciousness
(which in this case is not founded on historical fact) serving as support for
legal controls over the appearance of space.
The aspects of zoning, collective
consciousness, and economics we have been discussing are all intrinsically
tied. While there may be efforts to
alter zoning for visual purposes, zoning is also subject to claims by economic
interests. I argue that these are
effectively reconciled in most cases through attempts to make economic
interests coincide with visual preferences.
Ultimately, decisions are made through a political process that gives
weight to the different processes.
Perhaps no process in the regulation of visual order is more politically
contentious than the destruction of space.
The Destruction of Space
In San Francisco,
Castells (1983) noted the emergence of a gay neighborhood in San
Francisco. Political organization to
oppose a highway project that would destroy the area combined with a
conscientious stylistic renovation of the Victorian homes. While the consolidated image achieved
through the renovation of the Victorian homes is yet another example of
regulating visual order, the unsuccessful attempt at demolition raises the
question of the destruction of space.
The destruction of space seems strangely absent in most of the
literature on spatial theory. Lefebvre
discusses the creation of new spaces,
but does little to address the destruction of the spaces that preceded
them. He presents the example of the
street grids of Latin and North America as tools for the destruction of the
previous space:
The main point to be noted… is the production of a social space by
political power… A social space of this
kind is generated out of a rationalized and theorized form serving as an
instrument for the violation of an existing space.
…
[I]n both these cases the pre-existing space was destroyed from
top to bottom; in both the aim was homogeneity; and in both that aim was
achieved.
(p. 151-152)
Lefebvre further elaborates on this while discussing what he calls
the “domination” and the “appropriation” of space:
In order to dominate space, technology introduces a new form such
as a meshwork or chequerwork. A motorway brutalizes the countryside and
the land, slicing through space like a great knife. Dominated space is usually closed, sterilized, emptied out. The concept attains its full meaning only
when it is contrasted with the opposite and inseparable concept of appropriation. (p. 165,
italics in the original)
His contrast between domination and appropriation can be
illustrated by the differences between the militarized spaces described by
Davis and the socially controlled spaces of Whyte. One set of spaces is controlled through the means of physically imposed
divisions, while the other is regulated through social activities. Thus for Lefebvre, the physical divisions
imposed to control space require the destruction of space. Overlooked, however, is the role of visual
cues in both “dominated” and “appropriated” spaces. If “dominated” spaces are physically divided, they are visually
cleaved as well, while “appropriated” spaces demonstrate their social uses
through the regulation of their appearance.
It is perhaps
important to discuss here Marx’s “annihilation of space through time,” given
the similarity of the terms. Marx
describes the use of technological innovations to increase the speed of
transportation of goods and delivery of services. As transportation time becomes divorced from physical distance,
and takes on primary importance, space is “annihilated” according to Marx. This leads to conclusions that as place
loses a unique hold on production, generic patterns of (capitalist) consumption
and culture emerge, leading to generic cities.
In this regard, the boundaries of space dissolve.
Harvey (1990) attempts to nuance the “annihilation of
space through time” by introducing a distinction between space and place. This allows him to discern both a
specialization within places and a homogenization between them. His distinction, however, leaves place as
some independently existing form of locality, rather than recognizing it as a
form of socially-constructed space.
This allows him to mirror other observations of the
globalization of capital (Sassen 1996).
While capital flows may bring about many aspects of standardization,
they also create areas of specialization.
The “division of labor,” occurs within space, which itself becomes
divided and specialized by capital.
Harvey (1989) in a previous book notes that
Capitalism, after all, “establishes its residence on the land
itself and the seemingly solid presuppositions given by nature [appear] in
landed property as merely posited by industry” (Gundrisse, 740). The value embodied in such use values cannot be
moved without being destroyed. Capital thus must represent itself in the form
of a physical landscape created in its own image, as use values created through
human labor and embedded in the land to facilitate the further accumulation of
capital.
(p. 43, brackets in the original)
Moreover, Debord claims:
“This society which eliminates geographical distance reproduces distance
internally as spectacular separation.”
(quoted in Knox 1993, p. 18)
Thus, while capitalism may reduce the barriers to movement through
space, visual means serve to define separate spaces.
Nevertheless, trying to fit this into Marx’s
“annihilation of space through time” is too great a stretch. It is precisely because social space has
extended, rather than being annihilated, that these observations about places
have emerged. If anything, as we note
in the quote from Debord, it is distance, rather than space, that is
annihilated. The concept of “creative
destruction,” as elaborated by Harvey, is much more useful. With broader scope and minor modifications on Harvey’s use, primarily
concerning the points I have discussed about the distinction between ‘space’
and ‘place,’ I will talk about it as the “destruction of space.”
Continuing to build on the spatial aspects
of Marx’s work, Harvey begins a conceptualization of the destruction of space with “creative destruction,”
capitalism’s need to destroy fixed capital when it begins to constrain the
movement of capital. He focuses his
attention on the production of additional capitalist space to deal with the
problems of uneven accumulation, rather than fully addressing the process of
the destruction of space necessary for this reorganization. He looks at how the bourgeoisie capitalizes
on the destruction of space, but the actual process of destruction—the manner
of targeting particular spaces and the arguments that serve to motivate their
demise—is not really described.
Some broad foundation does emerge from a
close reading of Harvey’s description of the destruction of much of Paris
during the Second Empire (1989). Harvey
implies that Haussman justified demolitions as ridding the city of “slums,” and
explains that “Haussman tried… to sell a new and more modern conception of
community in which the power of money was celebrated as spectacle and
display...” (p. 163) Portraying an area
as a “slum” is to impose on it a profoundly negative identity that is
associated with particular visual qualities.
Offering “spectacle and display,” on the other hand, explicitly refers
to the creation of visually ordered spaces.
Thus, from Harvey’s account it appears that Haussman relied on social
marginalization using visual means and the promise of visual order to destroy
space.
From the more recent
experience of slum clearance sponsored by the federal government in the United
States, Weiss (1980) shows that regulating visual order factored into the
motivation to destroy space through urban renewal. He explains:
[M]ost housing reformers were middle class
people who placed a high value on the elimination of slums as an end in
itself. Their concern with tearing down
unsightly buildings often took precedence over their concern for the welfare of
the people who lived in them.”
(p. 71)
While he does not draw this out, regulating
visual order is evident in “tearing down unsightly buildings,” while the
destruction of space occurs both in the demolition of the structures (physical
space) and in the detriment to the “welfare of the people who lived in them”
(social space).
A
distinction should also be made between the destruction and the fragmentation
of space. When space is fragmented, its
constituent parts remain in that place.
The connections that hold the space together are broken, resulting in a
series of different spaces. Such a
breakdown of connections necessitates a change in collective consciousness, as
the spaces come to be recognized as separate. The destruction of space,
however, involves the obliteration of
the elements that formed that space. In
these terms we can distinguish between aspects like neighborhood decline
through disinvestment or a rise in crime on one hand, and the practice of slum
clearance or rapid ethnic change or gentrification on the other. The former is an example of the fragmentation
of space, where households that once formed a cohesive community (social space)
have lost their ties (although in some cases the adversity of living in poverty
might foster strong social ties), while the latter involves the loss of the
social elements of the space. In the
case of slum clearance, the physical elements of the space are destroyed as
well. While fragmentation may occur
without resulting in the destruction of space, it is often is a precursor. The example of ethnic change illustrates
this, as there is always a degree of fragmentation in such neighborhood
transformations; ethnic groups redefine neighborhoods as the former social
space is breaking down.
PART THREE: Times
Square
Times Square is in some ways a
difficult case to illustrate the theoretical argument that I have
outlined. In addition to the two
thoroughfares that make it the “Crossroads of the World,” Times Square is
intersected by myriad social spaces.
The various groups that make use of it, its role in representing New
York and America, and the multiplicity of jurisdictions all complicate the
picture. Its tourism functions also
complicate things, as many of its users are not directly represented in
political determinations about Times Square.
Largely because of its representational value, however, Times Square has
commanded a great deal of attention, and has been well documented. The conflicts over its appearance can
therefore be explored through the literature in the absence of an opportunity
to conduct an extended ethnographic study.
The
research for this paper consists of a review of the academic literature and the
Draft Environmental Impact Statement for the 42nd Street Redevelopment Project,
as well as a content analysis of newspaper articles. Field notes of the physical space and its use have served to help
evaluate the sources and to make additional observations.
Newspaper
articles were researched primarily using Lexis-Nexis, which keeps full articles
from major newspapers. Full articles
from the New York Times begin June 1, 1980, with abstracts back to
1969. Articles from Newsday begin from
March 1, 1995. Online articles searched
through the Village Voice website go back to about 1997. The analysis also included newspapers from
outside New York stored in Lexis-Nexis.
Newspaper
articles were searched by combinations of the keywords “Times Square,”
“planners,” “planning,” and “aesthetics.”
After reviewing the CUNY Graduate Center study, I also added the keyword
“ghetto.” Scholarly sources were
researched by suggestion from academics, references in other academic work, and
keyword searches in academic databases and on the internet. Planning documentation was limited to the
text and comments on the 1984 Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) and
the annual reports of the Times Square Business Improvement District.
A
great deal of the public record on Times Square is found in the pages of the New
York Times. While newspapers can
never be considered objective sources, and in part because they are not, they
play an important role in creating collective consciousness. To the extent that we are interested in
identifying collective consciousness, the accuracy of the reports is not really
at issue. When we move to identifying
how social groups attempt to use collective consciousness to regulate visual
order, however, it becomes important to understand how they represent the
appearance of space. As a landholder in
Times Square, and the source of the area’s name, the New York Times has
been suspected of taking a partisan role in supporting redevelopment. So while we will begin by relating the
recurring statements that illustrate collective consciousness, we will come
back to take a closer look at how these work to regulate appearance.
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Figure
3: Although the
area is defined in varying ways, Times Square is a socially defined and
recognizable place.
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To begin an investigation into the recent
transformation of Times Square, it is necessary to look at its context. Urban spaces rarely have clear boundaries
that are universally agreed upon, but they continue to be socially
recognizable. “Times Square” generally
refers to the entire area characterized by illuminated signs beginning in the
streets in the low 40s and running up into the 50s, between Broadway and 8th
Avenue. Some uses confine it more
narrowly to the “bowtie,” and officially only the southern triangle of the
intersection bears the name “Times Square” (the northern triangle is “Duffy
Square”). Forty-Second Street is
identifiable, and it will be important to this study to look specifically at 42nd
Street at times. Nevertheless, in
general usage and in terms of the overall picture of the social space, 42nd
Street will be regarded as a specific portion of Times Square. The “Theater District” constitutes a largely
overlapping, although slightly different, space that is defined around the
“legitimate” theaters and the restaurants associated with their patrons. This paper makes use of the broad definition
of Times Square as the space roughly defined by the large, illuminated signage,
which is roughly the area covered by the Times Square Business Improvement
District (BID).
First, here is a brief description of its
redevelopment. Times Square was
redeveloped through joint City-State planning efforts. The first suggestion for redeveloping 42nd
Street through the City’s use of eminent domain was proposed by the Broadway
Association, which hoped to capitalize on preparations for the 1964-5 World’s
Fair. Despite drawing some attention,
this proposal never got off the ground.
The Ford Foundation supported a sociological study in 1978 that
culminated in the City at 42nd Street plan.
This proposal ended when it failed to gain acceptance by the City under
Mayor Koch, who changed it for a similar plan put together by the state’s
development branch, then called the Urban Development Corporation, now Empire
State Development Corporation, with support from the City. The plan fought through various court
challenges, only to find itself further delayed by a stagnant real estate
market. Finally in the mid 1990s, as
the real estate market recovered large media corporations, most notably Disney,
moved into the area, transforming its image.
In 1992 the City and State planners were joined by the BID, which
implemented a project of security, litter removal, and sign restoration, in
addition to advocating various legal controls for the area.
Collective Consciousness
A common narrative, both expressing and creating collective
consciousness, explained the situation in Times Square from the late 1960s
through the early 1990s, and was repeated endlessly in newspaper articles and
other accounts. The opening description
from an article from Newsday (“Halo for Times Square,” October 16, 1989)
is a good example:
An evening stroll down 42nd Street between Seventh and Eighth avenues is
like a surrealistic journey to the home office of sleaze. Fluorescent light from store windows mixes
with illumination from neon signs to bathe the sidewalks in a ghostly
glow. Salesmen huddle in the street’s
eerie shadows hissing to passersby: “Marijuana! Marijuana!” Entranceways to some shops smell of
urine. Cameras, junk food and casual
clothes are available to the 42nd Street shopper, as are an astonishing variety
of porno books, X-rated videotapes and, it is said, not-so-casual sex.
But “the Deuce” (as the police
call it) is known for more than tawdriness; it may well be the most
crime-infested place in the city.
Combined
with descriptions of other aspects, there is an insistent emphasis on the
visual characteristics of a degenerate 42nd Street, which extended
to the rest of Times Square. Generally
of greater concern than the actual appearance of Times Square, however, was the
perception of crime. Although these
might seem to be quite distinct aspects, they are intrinsically bound. As we can see in the example above, the
visual character is intimately tied in representation to the negative
characteristics of Times Square. It is
worth noting that 42nd Street became the representative space within
Times Square, particularly when describing the bad conditions in the area.
Throughout
the redevelopment process, competing groups attempted to influence and leverage
the collective consciousness of Times Square.
In these attempts, the visual character of the area provided
justification for the various proposals.
Sagalyn (2001) provides an explanation of the way the groups she
identifies leveraged and attempted to regulate the visual order of Times Square:
Throughout
the twenty-year development period, symbolism was used by all of the drama’s
players to shape the debate and promote alternative visions of what the new
42nd Street should be. For the
project’s promoters, it served as a rationale for advancing a large-scale
development… designed to return the street to its former legendary glory. Promising that the midblock historic
theaters would be preserved, city officials used symbolism as political
leverage to build a coalition of support among preservationists, culturally
minded civic groups, and performing artists.
Developers too, fearing a return to the days of porn, evoked symbolic as
well as real images of the past as an argument against allowing movies on the
street. The argument against demolition
of the architecturally defaced former Times Tower rested solely on symbolism:
It was revered not as architecture, but as an irreplaceable icon of the place,
of New York. Civic groups in pushing
forth their agenda for strong urban-design controls in Times Square
vociferously argued in terms calculated to evoke symbolic meaning: Don’t let
corporate culture dull and dim the Great White Way. And finally, the project’s planners evoked the razzle-dazzle
visual images of the Great White Way to promote 42nd Street Now!
(p.
26)
It was not simply a matter of manipulation, however, as the
actors were influenced by collective consciousness too. William Stern (1999) was head of the state’s
Urban Development Corporation (now Empire State Development Corporation), which
had jurisdiction over the redevelopment of 42nd Street. He noted, “All of us involved in the redevelopment project were New Yorkers, born
and bred. We remembered a better Times Square.”
Sagalyn draws distinctions between
symbolism and visual images that I do not make. Whether the images are simply reproduced or conflated with
ideology, they refer to, and attempt to regulate, various visual
characteristics in the area. Sagalyn
may perhaps be too rigid in her distinction between architecture and icon, if
we look at it in terms of urban design, since the tower is a central point of
the electric signage that defines the area.
Nevertheless, the iconic quality that she notes is important; the New
Year’s Eve celebration, for example, which is centered on the ball that drops
on top of the building, is central to the collective consciousness of Times
Square (and the United States). The
Times Tower, thus, is higher in the hierarchy of collective space than other
structures in Times Square, which gives it a privileged position in the
regulation of visual order.
The discussions of Times Square
bring out additional comparisons that organize collective consciousness that
would not have been apparent to Suttles during the 1980s, when cities seemed to
be at their worst. Not only are spaces
measured against their past heydays, they are also compared to their worst
periods of infamy. As Times Square is
being redeveloped, discussion has placed possible futures in a framework
structured by both the golden age of Broadway and the era of neon sex. Thus, Michael Musto writing in the Village
Voice (Dec. 3, 2001) can jokingly say about the Ferris wheel in the new
Toys ‘R’ Us store: “[I]f Times Square plunges economically, the ride will
become a gigantic porno wheel!”
Boyer (2001
[1996]) claims that following World War II, most people no longer directly
experienced Times Square, and it increasingly became an abstraction defined by
representations. This observation of
the role of representations is apt, given the constant references to
films.
Boyer takes the argument farther, however, claiming:
Times Square, by now,
is known only through its representations, its sign systems, its iconic
cinematic presence; and pleasure is derived from experiencing the illusion of
the Great White Way, by marveling at its Lutses, by planning its unplannedness,
by foregrounding the apparatus that produces these manipulated representations.
(p. 48)
Returning to the issue of representations of Times
Square, the film “Midnight Cowboy” played a particularly strong role in
structuring collective consciousness, and has served as a common reference
point in much of the discussion of Times Square. Produced in 1968, “Midnight Cowboy” depicts male prostitution in
Times Square, showing scenes of (off-camera) homosexual sex in a theater, and
long sequences of the “cowboy”/hustler protagonist walking down the crowded
sidewalks under the illuminated signs of Times Square through the day and
night.
Martin Scorsese’s “Taxi Driver” from
1976, although not as frequently referenced as “Midnight Cowboy,” likewise made
an impression on the collective consciousness of Times Square, and marginal
city districts in general. The film has
become such a symbol of the grim, gritty inner city, that it has been
integrated into an urban esthetic. (Lloyd 2000)
These representations did more than influence the
general impressions that people had of the area, they motivated action. We can speculate on how they altered the
choices of individuals to visit the area (thereby regulating its social space);
decision-makers certainly did. William
Stern (1999), who previously headed the state’s Urban Development Corporation
(now the Empire State Development Corporation), which was the parent
corporation for the 42nd Street Development Plan stated:
The
mayor recently told me about how, during the 1970s, he watched Martin
Scorsese's film Taxi Driver, which depicted Times Square as a hellish
nightmare, and wondered how adversely it might affect tourism.
Stern,
who was on the board of Disney, brought the CEO Michael Eisner to see the New
Amsterdam theater on 42nd Street.
Stern was also the architect for the “42nd Street Now!” plan,
and by combining these roles he was able to bring about implementation of his
plan. Given his traditional designs,
series of books on the history of architecture in New York, and his tenure in
historic preservation, it would be hard to argue that his efforts are not
closely tied to collective consciousness.
Perhaps more so than with Koch, who was directly responsible to public
opinion, it might be possible to ask whether Stern was influenced by it, or
simply tried to use it to influence others.
This is to some extent a false question, as I suggested with Koch. Unless people were willing to accept
anything Stern told them, his designs and acceptance of the designs were
constrained by collective consciousness, even if he was able to play some role
in shaping it. Moreover, even academics
are subject to collective consciousness, as they inevitably accept some
assumptions and are often dependent on the same limited set of primary sources.
The Times They Are A-changin’ Times Square
Come writers and critics
Who prophesize with your pen…
— Bob Dylan
Sorkin and Reichl split over the
independence of the architectural critics working for the Times. Sorkin (1991 [1985]) wrote an article in the
Village Voice, “Why Paul Goldberger Is So Bad,” accusing the Times
critic of bending to the development interests of the newspaper instead of
providing an honest architectural assessment of Johnson’s design. Reichl, on the other hand, sees the
architectural critics as somehow immune to the pressures that he sees drawing
the reporters into a common narrative that supported redevelopment.
The dominated-by-real-estate-interests approach does not sit
particularly well with me. While it may
be possible to cow the reporters into supporting redevelopment, it seems more
likely that as people who work in the area, they would have perceived potential
gains of their own from redevelopment.
Redefining Times Square around a middle-class, professional identity
would make the area conform more to their own identities, and would likely make
it a more comfortable place for them.
Moreover, newspapers outside the area that stood nothing to gain in real
estate or circulation were similar in terms of their negative portrayal of 42nd
Street.
Part of what was unique about the Times,
however, was its level of coverage.
Articles about this redevelopment project seem to have been given much
more attention than the Times typically gives to other projects in the
city. More importantly, the editorial
page was constant in its support for redeveloping Times Square. While the journalistic reporting can be
considered as generally representative of the current collective consciousness,
the editorial board proactively tried to motivate visual order in support of
the project, and when visual order turned against the towers in collective
consciousness, they used economic arguments and fragmentation. The project would provide jobs and
revitalize the west side. The towers
were necessary to rehabilitate the theaters; some visual deficiency in the
towers may be necessary if visual order was to be achieved along 42nd
Street.
The editorial page helped provide a
general impetus for redeveloping Times Square, but could not counteract the
opposition that had formed in the collective consciousness against the proposed
towers. At the same time, the
architectural critics writing in the Times rejected the towers, and
supported efforts by elite civic groups to define a visual order for Times
Square.
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Figure 4: In Wired New York,
the new Times Tower is depicted as a sparkling building by a prominent
architect that will replace unattractive buildings with socially marginal
uses.
(www.wirednewyork.com)
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The self-interest of the Times is beyond
question in the next major demolition of existing structures, expulsion of
healthy small businesses, and alteration in appearance. This will make room on 8th Avenue
for the new Times Tower designed by Renzo Piano. We will focus on regulating activities next, but we will return
to 8th Avenue again later.
Regulating
Activities
Collective
consciousness attributes a great deal of the change in Times Square to
policing, specifically the aggressive policing tactics of the Giuliani
administration. While it would be possible
to further nuance our approach by developing a distinction between legislation
and enforcement, for the present purpose it will be sufficient to regard them
as different aspects of an integrated process of legal regulation. Given the area’s reputation for crime,
policing was an important point of interest before plans for the area took
shape.
As planning for the area was taking off, policing was stepped up in
1978. Delano (1984) worked as a transit
police officer for the Port Authority during this period to write his
ethnographic study of the use of the bus terminal. He explains:
The bus terminal
assists in bringing a transient (i.e., mobile) population to the midst of a
distinct street-corner community, resulting in the existence of several subsystems. Further, some of the diversified actors in
the terminal population may also use the facility in ways for which it was not
intended. […] “negative” user[s] (who many times [are members] of the
street-corner subcommunity) enter in order to sleep, commit a crime, or simply
hang out. These latter individuals are
seen as deviant by other segments of the population, and the police are faced
with the task of controlling this diversity, providing a semblance of order to
it.
(p.
273-274)
Delano
makes use of the notion of “street corner” community developed by William F.
Whyte in determining distinctions between groups in Times Square; this
distinction is explicitly drawn through public, visually identified
behavior. More importantly, Delano
describes the role of the police as regulating the “semblance of order,” which
indicates that legally sanctioned force was used to try to regulate visual
order. This is not to say that the
police never violate individuals’ rights in regulating visual order; the
evening news and civil rights cases indicate that they do at times. Some causes of such transgressions become
apparent with Delano’s explanation of the police’s need to weigh different
goals within the dynamics of a changing present. We might also note that legal regulations often conflict with one
another, and the legislation and policies that the police rely on sometimes
infringe on civil liberties. While
police action sometimes transgresses the law and socially endorsed policy, we
will limit our discussion to the enforcement of officially sanctioned actions.
Within Delano’s explanation, we note
that not only are the police called upon to regulate the appearance of the
area, the police use visual means to do so: “[T]he officer’s mere presence in
uniform [can] act as a control mechanism, since a potential criminal may wait
until he leaves before committing an act, or may not commit it at all.” (p. 282)
The use of policing alone, however,
while regulating to some extent the visible activities, did not significantly
alter the visual order of Times Square.
Some of the targeted visual characteristics, like street peddling,
intersected with other concerns for the area, like crowding on the sidewalks,
as well as competition with business owners and the sale of stolen goods
(although Whyte (1988) found that most of these goods are not stolen, providing
an example of the dangers of accepting the “Broken Windows” indictment of
marginal activities). The police found
their ability to regulate visual order, and to address other concerns, impeded
by both the limits of legal controls and practical limits on available
force. Ultimately, the use of police
power was constrained by a defined use of the space that resisted the uses the
police would impose. In visual terms, the
presence of the police and attempts to regulate of some activities was
insufficient to overcome the overarching appearance of the area.
The inadequacy of the police to
address street activities was one of the central arguments in the DEIS in
support of redevelopment. The authors
of the DEIS’s saw a connection between the physical conditions along 42nd
Street, which they called a “backdrop,” and the activities. They viewed the activities on 42nd
Street precisely as a negative visual characteristic:
To some, the visual image of 42nd
Street relates more to the groups that throng its sidewalks than to its
structures… The dominant uses on the street attract a visible group of people
who congregate on the sidewalks—sellers and buyers of illegal drugs and other
substances, bag ladies, winos, hustlers of all types and teenagers who hang
around to catch the action. Completing
the scene are shoppers, patrons of the moviehouses and tourists.
(p. 2-21)
In addition to explicitly describing what they
considered its negative appearance, the authors located the group identities
that were problematic. Moreover, by
naming primarily the problematic groups, they supported their claim that the
street had become dominated by the “illegitimate” users.
Reichl
argues that the DEIS failed to assert the source of legitimacy of certain users
and the exclusion of others. This was
particularly acute in the discussion of “loitering,” where the DEIS notes that
the police were constrained from removing socially objectionable individuals
and groups because of the constitutional protection of the freedom of
assembly. The DEIS did, however,
provide a justification based on visual order for targeting loitering. The argument essentially said that because
the activity of loitering violated mainstream expectations for visible
activities, it defined the space in a way that was hostile to mainstream
identities.
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Figure 5: Those whose
appearance conforms to identities as
tourists
are not considered "loiterers," while other groups
are
subject to regulation by the police.
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There
is a further question concerning how “loitering” is defined. In my observations of Times Square, this
is a determination made as much on identity, as visually constituted, as it
is made on activity. Well-dressed
people, who might be theater patrons or tourists with time to kill, or office
workers on break are not considered “loiterers,” while less well-dressed
people, and minorities in particular, who are not visibly active in consumption
or production are targeted by the police for loitering. In his critique of the DEIS, Gans noted
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a
class disparity in the identification of loiterers, and asked that the planners
find a better way of conceptualizing the problem. They returned with the Final EIS, which offered a definition for
“loiterer,” but did not alter its conceptualization or usage. Before we continue with legislation by
looking at zoning controls, we will continue this investigation into the role
of identity in Times Square.
The Identities of Times Square
Kornblum directed an influential study at CUNY titled West
42nd Street Study: “The Bright Light Zone.” (1978) Not only does this
explicitly identify the area through its visual character, it implicitly
attributes a social identity to the space.
The concept of a “bright light” district emerged from the social ecology
tradition, and it encompasses both the aspects of flashy entertainment and
habitation by the socially marginal, by groups inscribed with negative
identities. The application of this
concept to 42nd Street begins to demonstrate the interconnection
between visual order and identity.
The CUNY study identified 42nd Street as a
male space:
The
West 42nd Street Bright Light District has become largely a man’s world of sex
shops, action movies, and retail stores which cater primarily to male tastes
(sporting goods, men’s shoes, electronics, cigars, etc.). In addition to the sexist aspects of 42nd
Street imagery, it is not surprising that unescorted women are so under-represented
in these blocks at most times of the day and the evening.
(p.
24)
The
study claims the “sexist” imagery played a role in deterring women from using
this space, noting that the (male) social space was regulated in part through
its appearance. The masculine nature of
the space was maintained largely by the various consumer goods available and
visible on the street.
Starr (1998) made a similar observation that stretches
further back in history, identifying the southern end of the bowtie, the
portion connected to 42nd Street, as historically a male space:
Glass was seen as
gleamingly modern by forward-looking 1930s designers and architects, and the
Schenley Tower was touted as the building of the future. A great shaft bursting with light and power,
it was the ultimate expression of masculinity.
The tower was perfectly located, Schenley’s [sic] said, citing studies
purporting to show that more men than women passed through the intersection.
(p. 113)
This
observation is part of a broader explanation that she offers about how brands
of whiskey played a role in the identity of the businessman in his smoky
dealings.
Sorkin (1991 [1985]) claims that the redevelopment was
intended to remove those whose identities conflicted with the white, middle-class,
and largely suburban, definition of visual order.
As
you will recall, there’s a plan for the area—strongly backed by the Times—to
impose a Bernie Goetz-style urban renewal scheme intended, by means of massive
construction, to blow away those persons whose troubling body-language has come
to typify the Times Square experience for many.
(p.
102)
The
acceptance of the “Broken Windows” interpretation is called into question, and
he suggests (through the invocation of Bernhard Goetz, a white man who shot
four black youths in the subway who demanded money) that the redevelopment was
racially biased.
Sorkin’s suspicion of racial
discrimination draws from the identification of Times Square with marginal
groups, including racial minorities.
Thus for many, 42nd Street was a “ghetto” street. The “ghetto” must be understood not only as
an area of physical disrepair, but also as an area set aside for marginalized
social groups; it encompasses both negative visual images and racial
exclusions. The aspect of racial
identity was also noted in the CUNY study:
Our counts of
pedestrian traffic at the noon hour refute the impression that the Bright Light
District has become a “Ghetto Street.”
This was an observation made by suburbanites in written comments on the
questionnaire. It is quite clearly not
borne out by our counts of pedestrian traffic.
At almost all times of the day and night whites are the numerically
dominant group along the street.… While
Blacks and Hispanics may be somewhat over-represented compared to their numbers
of the overall city population, neither are they the under-represented minority
nor the ghetto majority which they are in most other areas of the city. Of course the problems with this observation…
is that the “street people” along 42nd Street tend to be predominantly Black
and Hispanic, a fact which does not go unnoticed by the general
population.”
(p. 23)
While
the ascription of racial bias to suburbanites may often be done too easily
based on its own set of biases, in this case the assertion that suburbanites
associated 42nd Street with the “ghetto” presumably comes from the
self-description data from CUNY’s pedestrian survey. The data demonstrates Suttles’s observation that places are
identified in relationship to one another, rather than on absolute terms. For white suburbanites, who come from a
heavily white demographic and who would likely spend their time in the city in
those areas where blacks and Hispanics are “the under-represented minority,”
Times Square represented a minority, “ghetto” space, not because it was
numerically dominated by people of other racial identities, but because it was
one of the few spaces where they found themselves confronted with these groups
in any significant numbers at all. And
given the racial identities of the “street people,” it likely seemed like a
confrontation to them.
Another powerful identity in Times
Square was homosexuality. The
visibility of gay nightlife accompanied the marginalization of other
groups. Interestingly, this aspect,
which was central to the coexistence of the soapbox ministers and the whole apocalyptical
visual order that dominated Times Square and figured into many of the movies
set in Times Square, the marginality of homosexuality remained almost entirely
outside the newspaper discussions and played a relatively minor role in the
accounts of most academics, leaving the lower income gay community marginalized
by mainstream society and public discourse.
Even more affluent gays in the Village and Chelsea marginalized the open
sexuality of the gay space centered on Times Square, attempting to distance
themselves from an identity with which they did not want to be associated.(CITE!!!!!)
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Figure 6: 42nd
Street Sushi Bar in Tokyo’s Shinjuku District. Images of Times Square have influenced Tokyo, which has in turn
helped define the identity of Times Square.
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In
the Zone
While there have been varying
legislative approaches relying on policing, zoning represents the first
concerted efforts to redefine the visual order of Times Square. The Broadway Association, which attempted to
create “a revival of ‘class,’ in Times Square” successfully pressured the City
to make zoning changes in 1947 and 1954 to discourage penny arcades and
establishments running “sucker auctions.” (Sagalyn 2001, p. 58) These early
attempts at regulation were not successful either, and the DEIS noted that
banning the penny arcades in 1954 led to “further conversion of the storefronts
to high-turnover counter restaurants and shops selling ‘sunbathing’ magazines.”
(p. 1-5)
In 1982 the City altered the zoning, reducing bulk on
the east side while allowing more on the west side. At the urging of theater owners, the City provided a higher
permitted floor area ratio (FAR) in exchange for theater rehabilitation, as
well as allowing transfer of air rights from low-rise theaters to other sites
within a district designated around Times Square. These zoning changes were opposed by preservationists and other
civic groups, who were angry about the demolition of five Times Square theaters
earlier in the year to build the Marriott Marquis Hotel and suspicious of new
development. The massive hotel has been
widely criticized as an “anti-urban” detriment to pedestrian life. In appropriate terms conveying its detriment
to the desired visual order, Peter Bosselmann (1998 [1987]) stated:
When
plans for this hotel were proposed in 1973, they had been praised as a crucial
step in the city’s redevelopment program for Times Square. But when they were completed in the
mid-1980s, they failed to link pedestrians on Broadway to activities inside […]
Its decor, moreover, can hardly be compared with that of the five theaters it
replaced.
(p. 107)
The demolition of the theaters also
spawned the creation of a group called Save the Theaters that campaigned to
have all the remaining theaters landmarked.
While all the major theater owners opposed landmarking, the Board of
Estimate formed the Times Square Advisory Council to look at the area, ultimately
leading to zoning amendments.
Meanwhile, in December 1983, the 42nd
Street Development Project unveiled plans for four office towers around the
southern end of Times Square. Although
a good deal of care had been put into developing design guidelines that
attempted to integrate a newly imposed visual order with the collective
consciousness surrounding Times Square, the towers designed by Johnson and
Burgee did not follow the guidelines, providing fewer signs and exceeding the
bulk. The towers were intensely and
unrelentingly attacked by elite civic groups and the architectural community,
whose complaints eventually forced Johnson and Burgee to return to the drawing
board to make the towers conform more to the visual character of the area. Even redesigning the towers to incorporate
the area’s signage was not enough to save the design, and Johnson and Burgee
were eventually dropped from the project.
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Figure 7: The designs by
Johnson and Burgee for four large office buildings (two of them pictured at
left) with mansard roofs, recalling old theaters in the area, were widely
criticized as visually inconsistent with Times Square and a threat to its
identity.
(DEIS figure 1-4)
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It might seem appealing to treat
this as a case of an architect designing an individualistic project that was
collectively unacceptable, and that may have been a contributing factor. Nevertheless, it was largely the issue of
bulk that provoked the criticism, and the bulk was a determination made by the developers
and agreed to by the State, fixing a difficult design parameter for the
architects to work around.
The
arguments against the bulk were based on two points, its increase in congestion
and its effects on the visual character of Times Square. The increase in congestion is a functional
argument independent of visual order, but for the most part it took a back seat
to the question of appearance, and visual order was the defining point in the
conversation. This is, in part, because
the original deal stipulated that the developers would pay for the renovation
of the subway station, which would arguably have mitigated a great deal of the
congestion problem.
Beyond criticizing the developers’
proposals, the civic groups created an alternative vision of Times Square. Working with the Municipal Art Society
(MAS), Peter Bosselmann developed a model of the Times Square area and filmed
perspectives of different redevelopment scenarios to demonstrate the visual importance
of signage and the impact that taller buildings would have. Likewise, Artkraft Strauss, a company that
has been selling spectacular signs in Times Square for over a hundred years,
coordinated with MAS and other sign companies to turn off all the signs in
Times Square as a demonstration of its central role in the area’s visual
order. Sagalyn notes:
Through
printed criticism, high-profile publicity events, and cautiously husbanded
regulatory change, civic organizations pushed for an alternative aesthetic
vision of Times Square.
(p. 173)
While
these efforts did not command prolonged public attention, they were effective
in defining the visual order that framed discussions and led the planners and
decision-makers for 42nd Street and the City to amend the design
requirements and zoning codes.
The project’s developers initially opposed the
requirements for the large signage, which would have a negative effect on their
office space. While the positive
externalities that the signs produce in Times Square may have played some role
in changing their mind, the major motivation was the high rent they found they
could charge advertisers. Moreover, the
identity of the new Times Square (combined with city subsidies to companies
threatening to move out of the city) is strong enough to draw major corporations,
despite complaints about the signs from some of the office workers.
Although the FAR remained high, the zoning required
large, illuminated signs, as well as requiring buildings around the bow-tie to set
back after rising 50 feet. Thus the
civic groups, relying on technical expertise and public demonstrations to
define and illustrate visual order, successfully lobbied the City to legislate
their visual order through amendments to the zoning code.
Theater
owners and developers also worked with the City to allow for the transfer of
development rights from the theaters to sites along Eighth Avenue. This resulted in a conflict primarily
between theater owners and residents of the Clinton neighborhood. Clinton residents were opposed to allowing
greater development on the west side of Eighth Avenue, viewing it as a threat
to the visual order of their residential community. The Clinton residents thus claimed Eighth Avenue as its border
with Times Square, and sought to define the division through the visual means
of limiting the bulk along the west side.
Economics
The CUNY study suggested that economics was involved
in the picture by encouraging similar (male-oriented) uses to locate near one
another. Continuing on the previous
quote from the CUNY study:
When
one counts the sex ratios of pedestrians along 5th Avenue in front of the Lord
and Taylor Department Store, for example, the proportions are reversed. Thus a good deal of the sexual segregation
and specialization in stereotypical male products along West 42nd Street is a
matter of location economics which aggregates same-sex uses in one area.
(p.
24)
It
is economically beneficial for stores to locate near one another if they share
a customer base, because this lowers the transportation costs to potential
customers, making it more likely they will visit the store than if it were
located elsewhere. In the context of 42nd
Street, an underlying division between male and female consumption would have
been necessary to generate an economy of agglomeration based on masculine
consumption. Thus the social
construction of gender took on physical form on 42nd Street in part
because of the constraints of economic exchange. Again, as these aspects are all interrelated, the appearances and
interactions that men experienced in this space likely helped determine what it
meant to be masculine (at least if bachelor’s parties and 21st
birthdays have anything to do with the matter).
While it is always difficult to know
what motivates financial institutions to back a project or firms to select a
site, there is some evidence that these decisions are partially motivated by
the appearance of the area. Brian
Murphy, the senior vice president of the Prudential Realty Group remarked on
the interim plan: “This will give prospective tenants an immediate fix on what
Times Square will look like.” (New York Times, Aug.
3, 1994). Earlier, Sharon Barnes, one
of the Prudential project directors had said, “Once the demolition of all the
poor-quality stuff that is there now occurs, companies that couldn’t imagine
themselves being in that area will have another thought.” (Newsday,
April 22, 1991)
The economic issues surrounding the
signs also warrant some examination.
Although the developers initially opposed the sign requirements, they
came to see the signs as a large source of potential rent. Under normal circumstances, continuing to
add additional signage would cause the industry to suffer from diminishing
returns to scale. Each additional sign
would lower the value of all the signs around the square, as their visibility
declined. Instead, the visual order
that results from the signage produces a special place that makes Times Square
the primary tourist location in the city and maintains an active entertainment
district, thereby increasing the audience that can be reached by advertisers.
Noting the number of unused sign stanchions on 42nd
Street, however, it appears that, at least under the current recession, the
demand for signs has been exhausted, even if producing a special place
increases the demand. This may be
partially an economic result of the requirements imposed by the Empire State
Development Corporation, which mandate a minimum size for signs. It may have been possible to cover
additional space with smaller signs, which would have been available to
advertisers with smaller budgets.
Moreover, it seems to be partially the relative uniformity and market
limitations imposed by the requirements that have led to some of the complaints
about the “theme park” character of the area.
Because of the sky-high price of such large signs, and a scarcity of
smaller, more affordable signs, it is only the largest firms that can afford
the advertising space. As a result,
firms can more carefully coordinate their message with its context and can
follow trends that result in a themed quality for Times Square.
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Figure 8:
It seems an unlikely accident that Britney Spears appears beside the Virgin
sign in Times Square.
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Signage and economics also came into play in the design of the tower of
4 Times Square. The building made
provisions to make it more environmentally responsible by increasing its
efficiency. To reduce the amount of
structural steel, the building is capped by a truss, which would ordinarily be
considered an unacceptable architectural feature for a building that
contributes to the skyline. This was
resolved by deciding to cover the truss with illuminated signage, extending the
visual order of Times Square into the skyline.
These signs, however, would not be visible from Times Square but only
from more distant locations. While this
might have helped establish the identity of Times Square within the skyline,
there has been little demand for these speculative signs. Since completion, only one of the tower’s
signs has been rented. Recently the
owners put up a sign to advertise their own building to cover the eastern
panel.
Crowded
Out
The Times Square Business
Improvement District (BID) was formed in 1992.
It is an association that collects mandatory assessments from the
businesses within the district that are used to protect business and property
interests in the area, principally by regulating visual order through actions
such as repairing signs, picking up litter, and cleaning graffiti. The BID hires additional security and
operates a visitor center for tourists.
It also has some modest homeless outreach programs.
In its efforts to regulate visual
order, the BID operates mainly through economic and legislative venues. The BID itself is an economic structure that
has been put into place to eliminate the free-rider problem. It enables businesses to invest in visual
order without allowing others who did not contribute to benefit. The BID also enables businesses to benefit
from economies of scale.
Once constituted, the BID has relied
on the norms of the local business community to pursue legislation that would
protect an image they found conducive to their businesses. These have included support for the zoning
amendments banning the concentration of adult uses, and a ban of street
vendors, who were seen as cluttering up the sidewalks.
The BID security engages in a
moderate amount of destruction of space as well. By closely scrutinizing “loitering” in the area, the security
will make some groups feel unwelcome, undermining their ability to maintain
their social space within Times Square.
The ban on sidewalk vendors supported by the BID, which also helps
oversee its enforcement, is based on arguments about pedestrian congestion. At the same time, the City and the BID
encourage the media corporations to gather crowds outside their studios,
requiring additional police officers and BID security, and restricting or
completely immobilizing the sidewalks.
Every weekday, the BID sets up pedestrian barriers
along the west side of Broadway in anticipation of the teenagers that occupy
half the sidewalk in front of the MTV studio.
These youths stand outside during the filming of “Total Request Live”
(TRL) with Carson Daly at 3:00 for a chance to be seen by a star and to get on
television for a brief moment.
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Figure 9: The BID prepares each afternoon for
screaming teenagers to block the sidewalk during filming of MTV's "Total
Request Live."
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This location is part of the area covered under the
vending ban; a hot dog or t-shirt vendor using considerably less space cannot
set up there at other times. So why is
pedestrian congestion a problem when it involves a street vendor, but not when
there are masses of screaming teenagers?
Consider Sorkin’s (2001) description:
All
the networks (and MTV) now have fishbowl-style broadcast environments […] And
all use the celebrity-hungry crowds as fascinated backdrops. To fully participate in the Times Square
experience, we become little billboards among the big, craning to be seen.
(p. 10-11,
parenthesis in the original)
The teenagers taking part in the filming of TRL are
part of the visual order of Times Square, whereas street vendors are perceived
as a threat to that order. The
pedestrian congestion in Midtown Manhattan provides a logic that the BID has
been able to use in obtaining legislation to protect its visual order. This difference is certainly based in part
on the visual character of the activity, but it is likely that, like loitering,
there are identity issues at play here.
The teenage MTV fans tend to be largely white and middle class, whereas
street vendors are more often lower income members of racial and ethnic
minorities.
New
Victory for Victorian Morals
More central to the appearance of Times Square than the vendors,
however, is the removal and zoning prohibition of “adult uses.” Formerly, the pornographic movie theaters
and bookstores in Times Square constituted much of its appearance, and were the
aspect of its identity that most people found particularly objectionable. Pornography raises a difficult set of
questions involving free speech, community standards, and the exploitation of
women. Because of strong social norms
against pornography, and prevailing attitudes against sexuality
in general, the 42nd Street Development Project expended large
amounts of public funds to close “adult uses” along 42nd
Street. The City rejected a proposal by
the pornographic businesses, which knew they were under pressure, which would
have limited their visibility on the street.
Such limitations would have had the effect of conforming to the desired
visual order without eliminating this social space. Instead, the City adopted zoning regulations that prohibited
pornography in all but two sites in Times Square. In rather clear terms, the removal of pornography from Times
Square reflected a strong set of social norms.
While many of the arguments that led to enactment of legislation were
framed in terms of the public’s right to be free of imagery it found
objectionable, or the need to protect children from harmful images, in state
court the zoning was ostensibly justified by preventing “secondary effects”
associated with pornographic businesses.
A correlation was drawn between pornography, and crime on one side of
the equation, and lower property values on the other, although there was no
demonstration of a causal link.
Essentially the legal decision to uphold the decision in the Stringfellows
case was determined through norms of socially recognized and unrecognized
identities. Through the Civil Rights
movement, racial and religious minorities made important gains, and it is now
illegal to spatially descriminate against such groups as blacks and Jews (who
were previously denied the ability to purchase homes through the use of
restrictive covenants). At the time
these civil rights issues were being decided in the 1950s and 60s, there were
strong arguments about the secondary effects of neighborhood change caused by
the “infiltration” or “invasion” of such groups. Nevertheless, a more comprehensively inclusive and equitable set
of social norms prevailed, which determined that using such identities to
segregate space was unacceptable. Under
current legal precedent, however, sexual identities are not considered “suspect
categories” like racial, ethnic, and religious identities. Thus, in the Stringfellows case,
sexual identities were allowed as a basis for the destruction of space.
The prohibition of pornography oddly intersected with
religion in a way that was little questioned.
By accepting a minimum distance requirement to separate pornography from
places of worship, the Court accepted the imposition of religious identity on
urban space. More broadly than actual religious
sentiment, however, was a continuing Victorian notion of “family values.” Its notions of protecting the public from
sexuality, and children in particular, legitimized the distance requirements
from residential areas in addition to churches, and provided outlines for the
identity of a “New” 42nd Street.
The New 42nd
Street
The street signs on the stretch of
the former Deuce between Seventh and Eighth Avenues say “NEW 42 ST.” This choice of terminology is probably more
descriptive than the 42nd Street Redevelopment Project or the Times
Square B.I.D. had realized. Much of the
former physical space has been demolished, and the social space has been
replaced. Not only does 42nd
Street look different, it is filled by a different group of people. Critics of redevelopment in Times Square
have largely focused on its destructiveness in both physical and social terms,
while its proponents have conceded that some destruction was necessary to
rectify an awful situation. Sorkin’s
“Bernie Goetz-style urban renewal scheme” definitely claims that the
destruction of space was a violent means of eliminating an unwanted social
space. Delany (1999) puts it in only
moderately less dramatic terms:
The
current transformation of Times Square is a Baron Haussman-like event. But like Haussman’s rebuilding of Paris,
this event is comprised of many smaller events, among them the destruction of
acres of architecture, numberless commercial and living spaces, and, so far, the
permanent obliteration of over two dozen theater venues, with (as of May 1997)
more than a half dozen other theater demolitions planned within the next three
months. With it all dies a complex of
social practices…
(p. 144, parenthesis in original)
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As
Harvey would point out, more intensive development is contingent on the
destruction of the “underdeveloped” structures occupying the site. Yet there is a more explicit destruction
of one social space to make room for another. As major redevelopment was underway, Sorkin (2001 [1997]) said:
[T]he demonization
of Times Square can only presage its demolition and “cleanup,” a
standardization and scaling up that will dilute the [social] mix to
acceptable strength, the same hygienizing cycle that was brought to us
historically by the (we thought) discredited history of exclusionary zoning
and urban renewal.
(p. 14)
Like Reichl and myself, Sorkin noted that proponents
of redevelopment promoted negative representations to influence the
collective consciousness of Times Square.
Figure 10: Times Square,
before and after redevelopment
(Sagalyn 2001)
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Figure 11:
The DEIS identified 42nd Street separately from Times Square and the Theater
District, thereby contributing to its fragmentation.
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The destruction of 42nd Street was preceded
precisely by its fragmentation. First,
the street was isolated from the theater district by its loss of live theaters,
and the perception of crime
led to its designation as “the Deuce.”
Fragmenting it from Times Square was more difficult, given the
continuity of visual character, but this was also achieved through continued
differentiation in collective consciousness and the establishment of a separate
administrative jurisdiction. The
concentration of action films and sexual imagery became defining traits that
helped to differentiate between 42nd Street and Times Square. Fragmentation was promoted by the Empire
State Development Corporation, which severed 42nd Street
administratively from the surrounding area, and continued by identifying it
separately in the DEIS maps. The Empire
State Development Corporation described it as an area that had become separated
from the theater district and had to be reintegrated:
Historically it is
part of New York’s theater district – in fact, the City’s most famous theater
street is the spine of the project area.
Much of the project area is not visible from Times Square, however,
which helped to isolate it from the entertainment center when the heart of the
theater district moved north.
(p. 1-29)
The DEIS was explicit in its efforts
to destroy the existing social space to create a new one. It advocated bringing more “legitimate”
users into the area, so that they might feel that they had a claim to the
space. This creates a new social space,
which destroys the preexisting space as it increasingly limits the activities
of the previous community. Ultimately,
as the previous social space is destroyed, the new identities affect a change
in the visual order for their own ends.
This is precisely the result we have seen in Times Square. The DEIS focused largely on the
configuration of space to make it “defensible,” largely through observability,
but the appearance of the new spaces was also carefully conceived through design
guidelines to support the identities of the “legitimate” users, while various
actions were also taken to remove the visual character of the existing
groups. Among these design guidelines
was a consistent effort to consolidate the appearance and support observability
through the consistent use of transparent walls. Similar to Morikawa’s observation in Tokyo about the prevalence
of opaque and transparent walls in distinct districts, the anonymity of Times
Square, which displayed sexual products and concealed its patrons, was replaced
with a visibility that puts its new users on display.
This change is encompassed in a shift in the
construction of individual identity in Times Square. Previously individual identity dissolved into anonymity within
observed norms of shared sexual experience, while individual identity now
dissolves into the equally normative practices of collective celebrity.
Untamed
Territory
I should be careful not to portray the redevelopment
of Times Square as an unmitigated effort to destroy the existing social spaces:
criminal, gay, homeless, poor… There
were limits on destruction. Thus, the
newsstand at 44th and Broadway was not removed. Instead, it was moved and integrated into
the visual order, matching the materials of the new ABC studio. This was the result of economic regulation,
with politics assigning priorities between competing interests. Facing litigation and the potential for
negative P.R., ABC’s parent company Disney decided not to press for closing the
newsstand, even though it probably would have won in court. Already under criticism for undermining the
identity of
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Figure 12: This relocated
newsstand preserved a small business while integrating it into the visual
order of the new Times Square.
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Times
Square, Disney likely did not want to make headlines by putting an
immigrant-owned newsstand out of business in a city that characterizes itself
largely by the entrepreneurship of its immigrants. Such negative publicity might have resulted in calls for a
boycott that would reduce the company’s profits. Alternatively, for only a small expenditure, Disney moved the
newsstand from in front of the location for the new signature marquee and even
integrated into the urban design to complement the new ABC studio.
There were also some more deliberate attempts to
integrate the existing social space.
The point to be made here is that it was an act of integration, where
the existing groups would be disciplined to conform to the newly installed
identity. This was most clearly visible
in the legislative experiment for a Midtown community court, strongly supported
by the BID, which puts those who were sentenced to work. Seemingly copied from Foucault’s
descriptions, the court attempted to discipline marginal groups who committed
“quality of life crimes,” that is, disrupted the visual order, by sanctioning
them with supposedly self-edifying sentences that contributed to making the
area look better.
Boyer, Reichl, and Sorkin, among
many others, have all complained that Times Square is now more exclusive and is
becoming a theme park. In response to
this criticism, the planners in charge of redevelopment have long argued that
it is too accessible to the public and too strongly claimed by collective
consciousness to ever be overly subjected to a thematic visual order. And they claim they wouldn’t want it to
become a theme park, which would kill the street’s magic. Perhaps we should not look behind the curtain
wall, where these wizards have installed a Ferris wheel…
The destruction of space continues
to enlarge the new Times Square, as Eighth Avenue has been fragmented from the
rest of Times Square. It is a remnant
of the old Times Square, its appearance has changed little and there are a couple
of adult uses that are still holding on.
These differences have become the focus of attention, and are being
leveraged (see Figure 4) to destroy 8th Avenue and integrate it into
the new Times Square. The zoning
changes allowing transfer of bulk to 8th Avenue were an integral
part of this process, and the 42nd Street Development Project
continues to play a role with the building by Arquitectonica on the corner of 8th
and 42nd now nearing completion and the projected Times Tower.
Still, there is some truth to the
resistance against domination by a single visual order, particularly if that
order is exclusive. There is still some
diversity to Times Square; just the other day I saw two young black men pay a
man carrying a sign that said “6’7” Jew will rap for cash.”
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Figure 13: While construction
may try to integrate itself into visual order, it often becomes the space of
competing groups.
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Additionally, an exclusive visual order cannot fully sustain itself
without interruption. The very
construction and maintenance required to support its appearance undermine its
order. This is particularly true of
construction sites and especially scaffolding, which create new spaces that are
often claimed by competing groups.
I should perhaps clear up one of my
own previous misconceptions concerning the destruction of space in Times
Square. My initial impression was that
the decline of soapbox ministers was the result of aggressive actions by police
and BID security concerned about them bothering tourists. While some harassment may have occurred,
this is more likely the result of the destruction of the previous social
space. The soapbox ministers existed in
a symbiotic relationship with the area’s marginal population, and homosexuals
in particular, which the preachers continually denounced as sinful. The destruction of this marginal social
space encompassed these evangelists.
Telling a middle class family on its way to a show at the New Victory
Theater that they’re dirty and going to Hell just isn’t the same.
The criticism is not that a more inclusive Times
Square was destroyed, as the old Times Square was rather exclusive of
women. The criticism to be made is that
the new Times Square was achieved through the destruction of marginal social
spaces that might have been retained, and that marginalized groups have been
excluded from the visual order of the new Times Square, even if their presence
there is tolerated.
PART
FOUR: A Planning Vision
Discussions about vision and Times Square have
typically revolved around a critique of the “authenticity” of the new Times
Square. And although this question is
rooted in appearance and collective consciousness, I am not particularly
concerned about it on a planning level.
Many places people enjoy have some level of inauthenticity to them. Admittedly, I largely share a modernist
esthetic that values clarity, and in my own efforts to make places look the way
I like, I do advance such arguments.
However, since I recognize that other groups invest their identities in
other appearances, which I might find fake and tacky at times, I am unwilling
to argue that everything should conform to my own standards. This raises a tricky question, then, as to
how to confront visual questions in practice.
My belief is that planners and decision-makers have a responsibility to
understand visual order well enough to provide physical spaces that can be
inclusive of different identities. It
is important to distinguish between inclusive and diverse, however. Requiring an integration that disperses
minority groups in the interest of promoting diversity runs a great risk of
destroying minority social space and preventing the consolidation of political
spaces for those minority groups. At
the same time, it is important that groups are not excluded from resources or
from full use of their city.
While many pass off appearance as
superficial to the underlying economic interests of the developers in Times
Square, this ignores the role that social norms of appearance play in
determining value. Criticizing the
final acquiescence to bulkier buildings in Times Square after the zoning was
amended to regulate the visual character of signage implies that developers
somehow got the better of the civic groups.
This is a curious criticism, exhibiting more of a Marxist hostility
toward capital than observations of Times Square, since the interest of the
civic groups and most other critics of the redevelopment was precisely to
determine the appearance and identity of Times Square, not to block the profit
interests of the developers. To the
extent that the zoning was able to use signage to establish visual order in
Times Square, the bulk became less threatening.
More importantly, the question of appearance in Times Square centers on who
regulates its identity. While Susan
Fainstein is correct each time she reminds me that marginal groups are still
allowed to come to Times Square, and that they have always been subject to
observation and harassment, we cannot fail to recognize that they have lost a
valuable asset in the sense of ownership of Times Square. Even if Times Square was derided for its
poor appearance, it was a place where marginal groups felt a sense of ownership
over a famous, central part of the city.
However marginal and darkly portrayed in the movies, it was their
place, and it was a place that commanded enough recognition to still draw
substantial numbers of tourists. That
is no longer the case, as it has been replaced with a middle class identity. Marginalized groups are largely free to be
there, just like I am free to go into an upscale sushi restaurant. That does not mean I can afford it, or would
feel comfortable there. If an upscale
sushi restaurant were to replace the Medici in Hyde Park, the college students
at the University of Chicago would no longer feel it was their hangout, even if
it provided some interesting exterior design that could be the pride of the
neighborhood. And such is the case in
Times Square.
The problem is not that exactly planners completely
failed to create an image of Times Square to motivate social norms. Planners and architects like Robert A. M.
Stern did create appealing images. The problems resided in the conceptual flaws
of those visions. Much of their work
viewed the social norms directing economics as fixed parameters, rather than
constructions that might be influenced and changed, thereby legitimizing a
whole range of biases that should have been questioned. Thus, Stern framed a global competition with
foreign districts such as Ginza through a class-based conception of visual
order. The planners of the DEIS
likewise apparently believed it was necessary to accept the discrimination of
marginal groups to revalue 42nd Street, rather than developing an
image that could embrace both financial interests and the street’s existing
users.
Following a desire to include women in one of the
city’s central places resulted in the destruction of marginal space, with the
intention being largely the removal of conditions that made the area hostile to
women. Nevertheless, such efforts were
pursued uncritically and combined with other interests to destroy existing
marginal social space that was not demonstrably harmful. While the Millean conception of liberty that
underlies the American legal structure and much of its collective consciousness
would seem to protect pornography, at least in private, there may be room for
debate about whether pornography is harmful to society. But objections to the violence of action
films as a spatial problem emerged solely in Times Square, and there is no way
to support eliminating the video arcades except by targeting marginal
identities. One of the dangers of the
social regulation of visual order is a tendency to use appearance to segregate
space, rather than resolving the underlying social conflicts.
If the changes in Times Square have been criticized
for consolidating an environment that privileges more affluent consumers by
forcing out people who previously used the area, how might things have been
done differently? Since the resolution
of conflicts in urban space is the primary role of planners, a functioning
conception of visual order and an approach to dealing with it is necessary if
they are to be effective in their efforts.
The Olmstedian tradition and the approaches of Jane Jacobs and William
H. Whyte can help provide practical direction in this endeavor.
Frederick Law Olmsted combined a strong conceptual
image of an inclusive, democratic society with his designs for public space
that generated strong new social norms.
While we may question specific details of his aging conception, the
conjunction of design and social norms provided a powerful direction that
changed the face of the industrial city and continues to influence planners and
public discourse.
In The Life and Death of Great American Cities
(1961), Jacobs worked to redefine social norms regarding the appearance of
place, making mixed-use and heterogeneous housing attractive. Instead of simply accepting the socially
dominant understanding of space, she interrogated it herself and then made
persuasive arguments that changed collective consciousness by strengthening
weak, positive norms. The outcomes that
Jacobs achieved followed precisely from the way she was able to change social
norms.
While Jacobs’s example can be effective
for writers, the gap to dealing with concrete problems needs to be
bridged. Perhaps one of the ways to
bridge that gap is, in fact, through writing, and through visual and
multimedia images. It has long appeared
to me that one of the deficiencies in the current planning field is the lack of
effective writers, as planners have left discussion and illustration of urban
form almost entirely to politicians, journalists, and a few outgoing
architects. As a result, they are left
in a position where they can only implement visions for which somebody else has
already gained acceptance. If planners
take a more proactive role in articulating a vision for the city, they will
find it easier to shape places in positive ways.
To the extent that groups remain marginalized
despite efforts to change social norms, it becomes important to provide and
protect places that provide them with both dignity and a sense of
ownership. It is largely these spaces
of resistance or refuge that have the potential for creating images that
redefine social norms.
In order to determine how to improve
the use of an area, it is important to understand how it is being used. Whyte (1988) provided an excellent example
of how to study the use of an area.
There will always be value judgments, as well as social conflict,
involved in determining which uses are appropriate for an area. With a clearer understanding of the ways
different groups actually use the space, however, planners can more effectively
determine the equity and validity of claims by different groups. A more nuanced replacement for the “Broken
Windows” hypothesis will improve the approach of planners. By lumping loosely defined measures of marginality
together with criminality, the “Broken Windows” hypothesis inevitably leads to
the discrimination of minority groups.
It is necessary to carefully examine the reasons that groups and
activities are marginalized before deciding that they are not appropriate.
Unsurprisingly, Olmsted, Jacobs, and
Whyte were all closely tied to sociology, and planners seem to encounter
problems when they distance themselves from sociological work. In Times Square, the CUNY ethnographic work
became one of the principal bases for discussions about the future of Times
Square, cited by both proponents and opponents of redevelopment in the
newspapers, the environmental impact statements and its responses, and court
documents. The broad repetition of the
study’s findings suggests that sociological work plays a crucial role in
structuring the way visual order is conceptualized by planners,
decision-makers, and the public.
Moreover, it underscores the conceptual poverty of planning, as the
planners who wrote the DEIS relied on poorly adapted statements from the CUNY
study. Given the important conceptualizations
of sociology, it is important that it actually be included in planning
curricula, and planners should work more closely with sociologists. It would be particularly worthwhile to keep
an eye on the Sociology Department at the University of Chicago, which has
shown an increasing interest in questions of urban space
and has recently hired planner Saskia Sassen.
Understanding
visual order is one key to the relationships between people and places. Appearances are not, as many have passed
them off, solely a superficial matter that distracts from more important
issues. Visual order is an integral
part of social space and must be treated as such. While criticism of the ways appearance is used in the political
process have their basis in a rejection of underlying agendas, once we
understand that any visual order expresses some set of values intimately tied
to group identity, we realize that questions of appearance cannot be swept
aside, but must rather be integrated into an approach toward the space. Furthermore, such critics fail to recognize
that appearance, as an element of identity, is something that people
value. With an extended focus of
economics, we recognize that it can be exchanged for other aspects that people
might also value. It is thus a
disservice to simply claim that those who have accepted changes in appearance
that conform to their identity in exchange for other project elements have
somehow been duped. Perhaps they have,
but a more detailed analysis of the exchange would be warranted, rather than
the typical de facto conclusions.
Alternatives for Times Square and Beyond
With a better conception of visual order, it is
possible to imagine alternative arrangements for combining identity and
appearance in Times Square, even if my own observations of Times Square cover
only a short period of time and are not as systematic as the type of work that
William H. Whyte has done.
Achieving a socially acceptable visual order could be
possible without excluding street vendors, and perhaps it could even
accommodate places for pornography.
Instead of uniformly insisting that there be no blank walls at ground
level, it may be possible to amend the zoning to permit windowless sections in
areas with wider sidewalks to permit street vendors to set up. This would allow greater flexibility for
internal programs in the buildings (particularly helpful for the auditoriums of
theaters and cinemas, and potentially conducive for the privacy of adult uses),
ensure interest along the sidewalk, and provide a place for small sidewalk
entrepreneurs without conflicting with storefronts. Advertisements could be projected onto the walls at night after
the vendors were gone to maintain the visual order at all times. This approach would require rejecting the
absolute demand for observability through transparent walls, as well as an
acceptance of street vending as an acceptable activity. Precisely by questioning the relationship
between Times Square and other places, we can uncover concepts that might be
useful. Exploring the conceptualization
of “umote” and “ura” (roughly, front and back) that defines Kabuki-cho
in Tokyo, for example, may provide possibilities for allowing competing
interests to remain within Times Square without threatening visual order.
More voices could be included in Times Square while
maintaining its visual order through some simple changes in the signage
requirements. The requirements could be
redrafted to ensure a specified minimum coverage by signs, rather than
focusing on the size of the signs, thereby allowing more smaller signs
that would both enlarge the market and permit access to a greater range of
companies. This would also strengthen,
rather than weaken, the visual order of Times Square by preventing its
manipulation into overly controlled themes.
Without evidence that pornographic businesses actually
foster crime, regulations against pornography risk reinforcing social
marginalization and likely entail the unnecessary destruction of space. Because of the strong social norms against
pornography and the changes in property values, practically, it may be
impossible for it to return to Times Square at this point. Nevertheless, it is unacceptable to continue
using legislation to discriminate against customers with dissenting views on
sexuality.
Perhaps most importantly, planners that recognize the
importance of street vendors as enhancing street life and fostering economic
alternatives for those with limited options
should be writing and producing images of Times Square and other places that
support street vending. Use of local
examples, like Fordham Road in the Bronx and images from Times Square itself,
could be even more productive than references to successful foreign models, as
Figure 14: Unlike Times Square
and many other parts of New York, street vending coexists with stores like the
Gap, and is a central part of the excitement of Fordham Road in the Bronx.
(Trading Places: Martin
Pfirrmann and Matias Echanove)
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Figure 15: Informal
entertainment accompanies the street vendors as part of the street life that
defines the visual order of Fordham Road.
(Trading Places: Matias
Echanove)
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it
would allow the public and decision makers to experience the examples first hand,
and would raise fewer problems in terms of undermining local identity. In the end, I believe the physical and
social space in Times Square should be developed around a more inclusive visual
order, embracing entrepreneurs and patrons of the smaller businesses and street
vendors in addition to the major media corporations and professional
offices. This type of inclusion will
only exist if it can be supported by social norms, and embodied in visual
order.
While Times Square has already undergone a comprehensive
redevelopment, it remains open to future changes. In fact, the redevelopment around Times Square is not yet
finished. Currently Eighth Avenue is
slated for destruction and integration into the new Times Square. This should be closely scrutinized by active
planners to assure that the destruction of any social space be confined as much
as possible to those who demonstrably injure others, rather than encompassing
marginal groups in general. It is also
important to accurately document the conditions that exist, rather than
allowing perceptions to be driven by those with an economic interest in
removing others. Moreover, planners
should work to ascertain ways to protect the current social space and to preserve
its participation in the visual expression of identity. Aside from obvious changes (like not
condemning everything that looks run down), they might try innovations in
developing façade renovation programs for small businesses or providing display
spaces that are available to community members for periods of timing on a
rotating schedule.
With an understanding of how visual
processes work in Times Square, it becomes possible to recognize them
elsewhere, as with the potential destruction of Coney Island. Collective consciousness perceives Coney
Island much the same as it had viewed Times Square. Many people object to the stores along Surf Avenue, and the
people they attract. The City has begun
efforts to make businesses strictly comply with an entertainment-related
zoning. Apparently people do not find
the funky junk shops an entertaining part of the Coney Island experience. The Economic Development Corporation, the
City’s entrepreneurial arm, has been poking around recently, and if they happen
to come across a potential amusement park developer I would not be surprised to
begin seeing accounts about how ugly and dangerous the place is, accompanied by
black and white photos of run-down shops encroaching on the sidewalk (complete
with claims about the “appropriation” of public space), while slick, color,
computer-enhanced images of an attractive place for a completely different
social space circulated (possibly with sidewalk cafes, which are not viewed as
encroaching on public space). This too
must be closely watched to ensure that marginalized groups are not simply
removed or demoted to a parolee status.
I have only discussed New York City in this paper, and
the case has focused solely on a very specific commercial area. Nevertheless, the underlying visual concerns
and these means of regulation should apply in a variety of urban residential
settings as well. This would be a good
point for further inquiry, and could be part of an interesting extended
ethnographic study conducted from a planning perspective. A much more rigorous examination of the
economics of visual order is also a crucial future step. There is more work to do, and understanding
visual order is an important starting point.
