Making Sense of Place Film Series A documentary film and educational outreach project launched by the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy

Making Sense of Place – Phoenix: The Urban Desert

A Sense of Place – Planning and Making Communities

Quotes From the Film | Commentary by John Meunier | Lincoln Institute Publications | Lincoln Institute Courses, Conferences and Seminars

Quotes From the Film

"What's happening is we don't like what it all adds up to being. And so now we're beginning to say alright, 'Is there a way that we can not only have what we want as individuals, but that we can have what we want collectively?'"
--Vern Swaback, Architect

"How does place get made? It gets made through this dialectical process - between the sense of the larger community need and the sense of the individual right. And I think this is a wonderful laboratory to see those processes working - and making sense of them, understanding them. And then, of course, ultimately, if you understand them, maybe you can actually massage them a little, maybe you can actually make them work for you."
--John Meunier, Dean, College of Architecture and Environmental Design, Arizona State University, 1987-2002

"As we speak here today, there are thousands of people who are coming here with the same dreams, the same ambitions. And those folks change this place and change the values and direction of this place. And it's still a city that's in its adolescence and it's going through huge growing pains."
--Alfredo Gutierrez, Arizona State Senator, 1972-1986


Commentary by John Meunier
Dean, College of Architecture and Environmental Design, Arizona State University, 1987-2002

The Compact City as an Alternative
May 2003

Here in Arizona we have had two related but vastly different urban visionaries. Frank Lloyd Wright and Paolo Soleri were briefly together when Soleri came to join the Taliesin community as an apprentice. Like many of the most talented of those who came he did not stay long before declaring his independence; but if imitation is the sincerest form of admiration he stayed in Arizona and set up his own version of Taliesin at Cosanti and then Arcosanti.
Frank Lloyd Wright came from Welsh farming stock; Soleri from Italian urban roots. Wright valued an intimate relation with nature and the land; Soleri values the intensity and richness of condensed urban living. Wright promoted the idea, developed in a stable in Chandler loaned by Dr. Chandler, of Broadacre City. Soleri became famous for his concept of Arcology. These two ideas for urban communities could hardly be more different. Broadacre City has an extraordinarily low density, with the majority of homes sitting on at least one acre of land, in some ways like our own Paradise Valley but different in that the purpose of the low density was to allow a minimum standard of food self sufficiency. It is important to remember that the concept was hatched during the Great Depression. The various Arcology projects of Soleri, demonstrated in huge translucent models exhibited in museums like the Corcoran in Washington DC, promoted the idea of truly three-dimensional cities where all the different dimensions of life- living, working, playing, learning etc.- would be as close together as possible.
Neither of these visions has been realized in today's American cities, but of the two it is Broadacre City that has been more of the model. Wright was excited about the same ideas that have been pursued in the development of our cities: individual land and home ownership, a love affair with the automobile and the highway, dispersal and separation of functions, support for the initiatives of enlightened businessmen (Wright's clients), interlocking of man and nature so that communities merge with the surrounding landscape.
Arcology retains its fascination and tugs on our environmental consciences, but it remains a distant and unrealised vision. We have to recognize that our existing economic and political systems could not generate it, and there is an even more substantial reservation; does it map on American cultural values?
So is the alternative vision of a Compact City irrelevant? The answer has to be, no. In the history of cities, going back over 5,000 years, the compact city was the norm. It was the development of mass transit- trolleys and trains- that began the process of suburbanization along their routes, and then the automobile allowed multi-directional dispersion to ever cheaper land. That history is hardly 150 years old. The cities that we tend to travel to because we enjoy their qualities of cultural intensity and a rich pedestrian street life have their roots earlier than that.
During the last six months I have been travelling to Desert Cities around the world, mostly but not exclusively older cities. It has been a search for sustainability. We have been to Iran, Tunisia, Morocco, India, Egypt, Yemen, Australia, Chile and Peru. Previously we had visited China, Turkey, and Israel. Cities like Yazd, Shiraz, Isfahan, Tunis, Matmata, Fez, Erfoud, Marrakesh, Jaipur, Bikaner, Jaisalmer, Jodhpur, Udaipur, Luxor, Cairo, Sana'a, Shibam, Zabid, Adelaide, Broken Hill, White Cliffs, Coober Pedy, Santiago, Antofagasta, San Pedro de Atacama, Lima and Cusco, all have at their hearts an old compact desert city, which evolved and adapted to desert living over many years. Most of them have thriving mass transit systems which start in the boulevards around the dense centers which were developed in the early to mid twentieth century, often under colonial government, and then there is the catastrophe of the loose and relatively uncontrolled automobile and truck oriented development sprawling out into the countryside towards the airports and industrial parks.
These travels have raised in my mind the question; why can we not recover the benefits of the Compact City? Because it has so much difficulty accommodating the automobile is it doomed? Is it so at odds with American culture and values that it will never work in this country? These are difficult questions but as we look at some of Americas most popular cities, Manhattan, New Orleans, San Francisco, Chicago, Boston, Santa Fe, we are reminded that even here the virtues of the pedestrian city, the city of multiple coincident uses, are recognized and celebrated. Have we really done an accounting of the costs associated with our dispersed cities? What does a three car family, and a house with a three car garage, where every trip has to be measured in miles whether it is to post a letter, pick up a loaf of bread, or to go to school, really cost? And then there are the social costs of isolation, and a ghettoization of the community, often behind gates so that the different segments of society are only vaguely aware of each other, and even fearful of each other. Sprawl means spreading out carelessly, i.e. without care. I suspect that the purpose of this project is to ask for the community to act with more care as we build our great desert city. I would like to suggest that we reinvestigate the virtues of the Compact City as an alternative model for our future urbanism.


Lincoln Institute Publications

Fortress America
Author(s): Blakely, Edward J. and Mary Gail Snyder
Publication Date: January 1997

Global City Regions
Editor(s): Simmonds, Roger and Gary Hack
Publication Date: January 2000

Land Use in America
Author(s): Diamond, Henry L. and Patrick F. Noonan
Publication Date: January 1996

Metropolitan Development Patterns
Author(s): Lincoln Institute of Land Policy
Publication Date: June 2000

The Story of Land
Author(s): Powelson, John P.
Publication Date: May 1998

Urban-Suburban Interdependencies
Editor(s): Greenstein, Rosalind and Wim Wiewel
Publication Date: March 2000

The New Urbanism
Editor(s): Fulton, William
Publication Date: November 1996

Colonias in Arizona
Editor(s): Huntoon, Laura and Barbara Becker
Publication Date: September 2001

Natural Cities
Author(s): Lord, Charles P., Eric G. Strauss and Aaron M. Toffler
Publication Date: April 2002

Planning for Sustainable Development
Author(s): Berke, Philip and Maria Manta
Publication Date: May 1999

Public Spaces in Metropolitan Context
Author(s): Forsyth, Ann
Publication Date: November 1998

The Debate Over Future Density of Development
Author(s): Myers, Dowell and Alicia Kitsuse
Publication Date: January 1999

The Environmental Sense of Place
Author(s): Foster, Charles H. W.
Publication Date: January 1995

The Rural Landscape as Urban Amenity
Editor(s): Harvey, Thomas and Martha Works
Publication Date: April 2002

Land Use Planning and Growth Management in the American West
Author(s): McKinney, Matthew and Will Harmon
Publication Date: January 2002

Greater Phoenix 2100: Knowledge Capital, Social Capital, Natural Capital
Author(s): Steiner, Frederick
Publication Date: September 2001

Reaching Out to Community Planners
Author(s): Perkins, Martha Scott
Publication Date: May 1997

The New Urbanism Challenges Conventional Planning
Author(s): Fulton, William
Publication Date: September 1996

Imagining Cityscapes: The Politics of Urban Development
Author(s): Bowman, Ann O'M. and Michael A. Pagano
Publication Date: March 1996

Land Use in America: Past Experience and Future Goals
Author(s): LeRoyer, Ann
Publication Date: March 1996


Lincoln Institute Courses, Conferences and Seminars

Private Property in the 21st Century
Date: April 23, 2003
Location: Lincoln House, Cambridge, Massachusetts