Conclusions II

Study Area Comparisons

Four study areas were chosen in this report because they appeared to embody characteristics that were typical of many other neighborhoods in the city. In each of these areas a single block was chosen for data collection that was representative of the wider neighborhood. A wide range of measures was taken in an attempt to record the essential attributes of each block objectively and for comparison with the other study blocks. These measures included many of standard tools of urban planning and urban design: population density, building coverage, parking ratios, street widths; as well as a few unusual measures: frontage per entrance, historic population estimate, median parcel size.

Because the study collected a wide range of data points it is possible to see how the differences and similarities of the neighborhoods shows up in the numbers. These are all dense, urban neighborhoods, and as such they do have much in common. However each is composed of a different type of buildings, the physical attributes of which give the neighborhood much of its character. Can those attributes be measured in order to understand the why the qualitative differences one perceives when visiting are so clear?

Many of the measures are not helpful for distinguishing between neighborhoods. Some vary little, some move arbitrarily, some provide us with context without revealing anything about the study block itself. Some of the quantitative measures show little difference between the neighborhoods.

There were a few measures that showed important differences between the neighborhoods related to the form of the neighborhoods themselves. Several of these show a clear direction of change: number of parcels, median parcel size, building count, parking ratio and vehicle traffic mode. These measures all move in one direction with building age from Indre By to Sluseholmen. This seems to reflect the centralization of development decision-making and resources into fewer hands over time as well as the rise of automobile ownership.

A few other measures of the form of the neighborhood showed something a little different. Street-level shop count, building coverage, block size, courtyard size - these measures all move in a certain direction in parrallel with building age, until the Sluseholmen study block, where the direction is reversed. Sluseholmen was designed to recreate some of the feel of a historic neighborhood, so it makes sense that this is reflected in the measurements. Clearly, whether intentionally or not they’ve recreated a few of these aspects.

Are these measurements really getting at the most important differences between these places? Building coverage is a crude measure, and the success street-level shops are dependent on the qualities of a neighborhood at least as much as they help to shape it. The grain size of a place - which shows up in block size and courtyard size, is clearly important, and in this degree Sluseholmen shows real progress. Still, we hardly know anything about a place if we just know that it has small blocks. What are the qualities that these measures are hinting at, and what are they obscuring?

Further Research

Several dynamics revealed themselves during the course of the research which seemed to have strong effects on the quality of different neighborhoods depending on the type of building that predominated. The effect of these dynamics on the built form of different cities and neighborhoods could provide rich areas for further study.:

1. Centralization/decentralization of planning, design, construction and ownership

The number of decision-makers at each level of the creation and maintenance of residential buildings changes drastically over the range of neighborhoods studied. In the case of the Welfare Era building there was an exceptional degree of centralization. This tended to have the effect of maximizing those values prioritized by the bureaucracy, apartment size, integration with infrastructure, and efficiency of construction.
In the case of the Golden Era townhouse individual building owners made decisions about the design of their buildings, but their decisions were based on a common framework of vernacular design as well as design-plans made available by the court architects. The street and parcel grid were essentially inherited from medieval times, and construction outfits would have been small groups of craftsmen and laborers. The devolution of decision-making authority to more actors and to traditional practices seems to create a more complex built landscape, while centralized planning can provide structure and coherence. The situation in which many actors are making decisions within an overall strong frame work seems to result in the most successful neighborhoods.

2. Orientation outwards/inwards

 A marked difference between the 19th century neighborhoods and the 20th-21st century neighborhoods lies in the orientation of their buildings. In the Golden Era and Industrial Era building types the building is clearly oriented towards the street to the public: street-facades are more ornate, living-rooms face the street, while courtyards were cluttered with refuse, human waste, and poorer-quality buildings and plain facades.
Welfare Era buildings take a sharp swing in the opposite direction. Ostentation is abandoned in favor fairness and elevation of human dignity in the form of improved living conditions for all. These buildings turn inwards, focused on modern dwelling quarters and spacious courtyards. Livability Era buildings generally maintain this orientation away from the street, although ostentation in the form of architectural avant-gardism has made a comeback. These buildings are designed for residents to take pleasure in their homes, not to go out into society searching for something.
This shift in orientation is preserved in the built landscape of the neighborhoods composed of these different types. It seems no accident that the most lively nightlife zones are located in neighborhoods composed of elements built to engage with society.

3. Specialization of function and class

There is a strong chronological trend towards increasing specialization in the building types described. The Golden Era type is vertically stratified by class, with servants living in attics and wealthy families on the first floor. Shopkeepers and pub-keepers are operating out of the cellars and light industry or animal husbandry is taking place in the courtyard. The Industrial Era type generally maintains these arrangements, though industry is starting to move to specialized districts and the poor are more often constrained to the crowded back buildings in the courtyard.
Welfare Era buildings by contrast are enormously specialized by function and class. They are made of identical dwelling units with identical prices. They are built to provide  the best possible housing and this is nearly the only thing they do. While the Livability type makes concessions to the mixing of uses, they are nearly as specialized as the Welfare Era type especially in terms of socio-economic class, as these buildings rarely contain subsidized units.

4. Purpose of creation

Buildings of each type were created for different purposes, the effects which were expressed in their design and location. Golden Era townhouses were built by wealthy families to establish their stake in the city. The Industrial Era type was built to turn a profit. The Welfare Era type was built to advance society (and sometimes to develop voting constituencies in suburban jurisdictions). The Livability Era type was built both to turn a profit for developers and to strengthen the city financially.
The purposes behind the creation of each other neighborhoods profiled is revealing too. Like the Golden Era bourgeois, the hippies of Christiania sought to establish their stake in the city. Nyboder was built to strengthen the power of the state, while the urban renewal projects in Norrebro were an attempt by the state to change an existing neighborhood for its own good. City planners and citizens should be conscious of the motives behind their planning and building projects as these will likely be permanently expressed in the form of the built environment they create.

Back in the grid

My flight home took me over the North Sea, Greenland, and Nunavut Canada. We left Frankfurt around 1pm and got into Seattle at 1pm local time - a nine hour flight over nine time zones. It was the day after the winter solstice, so as we went up into the Arctic Circle even though it was still 1pm there it was dusk - on my side of the plane at least, with an unending dawn on the other. The barren, icy peaks and smooth glaciers of Greenland had an eerie blue glow to them in this midday twilight.

Once we got down into the settled part of Canada I noticed something that signaled I had returned to North America. We were flying over vast forests speckled with lake and through it were roads running in confident straight lines across the land, intersecting one another at right angles.

This grid of country roads extends south into my home state and covers most of the continent north of Mexico. On the USA side of the border it is based on Public Land Survey system, which organized the entire country east of the Appalachians into townships of 36 square miles each. This grid made the administration and transfer of land easy for bureaucrats, boosters and settlers based hundreds or thousands of miles away. 

The organization of land based on abstract models is characteristic of powerful governments expanding into new territory. It prioritizes large-scale organizational efficiency over local decisions based on topography, resources and networks. In Europe it can be seen in some Greek colonies, Roman army camps and cities, and Renaissance expansions to old medieval towns. In the America's you can see it in both the cities of the Aztecs and of the Spanish, and much later in the cities of the Anglo settlers of the United States and Canada. At the grandest scale, the invention of latitude and longitude to mark out precise coordinates on the globe applied a grid to the entire world. 

As far as I know however, the creation of the Public Land Survey in the USA was the earliest use of such an abstract organizational system for land settlement at the continental scale. Settlements still arose at strategic locations based on natural features and connections to other settlements, but these new settlements could share orientation and arrangement with cities and towns hundreds of miles away. Most American towns have the federal government in their DNA.

As the country was populated and cities sprawled, the 36 square-mile sections of each township became the organizing structure of new settlements. "Section-line roads" followed the paths of least bureaucratic resistance from growing towns and cities - the coarse grid formed by these thoroughfares provided the minimum network necessary for postwar suburban developments.

The creation of a built environment based on a continent spanning matrix and filled in by profit-seeking enterprises often gives the populated American landscape a particular feeling of blandness and meaninglessness. It is this emptiness that has motivated a new generation to seek out authenticity wherever they can find it, and to seek to create places that have some kind of meaning. The challenge is great because the large-scale systems which generated our sprawling everytowns have been refined and strengthened over the years. It has been a thrilling and experience to travel to Europe and be in places that are much older, that came together slowly, through the decisions of many individuals based on collective wisdom and the observations of the particular circumstance. It is very good to be home, but it is unnerving to find myself once more in the grid.

Conclusions I

What are dense neighborhoods like in Copenhagen? What elements comprise these neighborhoods? What are the predominant building types? How do typical buildings shape their form?

This research project was undertaken to answer the above questions. We have learned about the character and history of a range of neighborhoods in Copenhagen. Those neighborhoods that had the most to say about the city as a whole were selected for further analysis, and a fundamental building type of was described for each of these neighborhoods which arises from its history and determines its structure and character.

Despite the differences between these types there is also a clear lineage among them. These related types share features despite the more than 200 year time span and enormous advances in technology they encompass. These include:

Stairwell organization: with two or three units on each floor grouped around a stairwell. This eliminates the need for internal corridors and by provides greater interaction with the street than a single entry point. It also makes possible narrower buildings than are common in Seattle.
Narrow buildings: ranging from about 9 to 12 m ( ft) in width in most cases. This increases the feasibility of linear arrangements.

Linear arrangements: especially the encirclement of the block.
Natural light from two directions: with windows both of the street and courtyard sides. This is possible because of the lack of internal corridors and the narrowness of buildings.

Courtyards: creating an area which is clearly removed from the public realm. These are present for most of the building types described, with the exception of the late-stage Welfare Era type. This maximizes the usable land for residents by devoting nearly all the unbuilt land to a semi-private use. Of course, courtyards must be well maintained and somewhat limited in size in order to maintain their usefulness and privacy.

Limited Height: The building types described fall within the range of 3-6 stories tall. Elevators did not become universal in multi-story buildings in Copenhagen until quite recently and even then they did not lead to a dramatic increase in height, with the taller Livability Era apartments only rising to a maximum of about 12 stories. This means that these buildings have a stronger connection with the ground level and the population is distributed more evenly across the city than would occur with high-rise development.

Masonry and concrete construction: In the early 19th century half-timber construction was abandoned in favor of bricks. Wood beams were used as lateral elements - for floors and roofs, until concrete construction became widespread in the 1950’s. The lack of earthquake risk means that even old masonry buildings are safe for habitation. This reduces redevelopment pressure on historic areas, strengthening the connection to historic built fabric.

All of these features have been regulated by the government in some fashion historically and in the present. Some early regulations are discussed in the report, although as time goes on housing legislation becomes more detailed and less accessible to the English-speaking researcher. Generally we can say that regulation merely codifies some version of what society deems acceptable, and that it is therefore one of many factors that goes into the shaping of building traditions.

The above qualities all contrast with the common characteristics of multi-family housing in Seattle which generally consists of freestanding, thick, double-loaded corridor buildings of highly variable height. Mid-rise multi-family buildings are now constructed of wood and older masonry structures are in need of seismic retrofits due to earthquake risk. These buildings occupy small areas of the city creating pockets of high population density surrounded by large areas of single-family homes.

My interest in the distinct morphologies created by our respective building types and traditions is what prompted this study. The effects that these morphologies have on the quality of public realms is worth researching further.

Sydhavn

Southwest of Vesterbro railroad tracks and industrial land occupy large areas of land creating barriers to movement. Two large parks occupy a significant portion of what is left. In the spaces between these elements the neighborhood of Sydhavn ("South Harbor") is located.

Sydhavn is a working-class neighborhood, composed exclusively of large blocks of flats constructed in the early 20th century. These brick buildings are 5 and 6 stories high and present continuous, unadorned facades to the street. Landscaped areas are spread throughout the neighborhood in open areas between buildings and the street and in building courtyards, some of which are open on one side. These courtyards are large open spaces purposely designed to be amenities for residents, and have never had any backbuildings or economic uses. The scale of this neighborhood is noticeably different from Vesterbro, with wider streets, more open areas, and entire block-faces occupied by a single building.

Sydhavn developed adjacent to industrial land along the city’s central harbor and railroad network. That area was the city’s industrial heart until the 1960’s and 70’s and areas like Sydhavn housed its labor force. Today the former-industrial brown-field sites near Sydhavn are being developed with corporate offices and high-end apartments. Meanwhile, Vesterbro to the north-east has become increasingly gentrified and unaffordable, putting the residents of Sydhavn in an uncomfortable situation. They want investment in their neighborhood and apartments, but fear losing the affordable rents they still enjoy.

Neighborhoods like Sydhavn appeared throughout Copenhagen starting in the 1910’s. At that time the government began to be more actively involved in the housing sector, updating regulations and making financing more readily available, and increasingly becoming involved in the planning of large-scale projects. Prominent architects became involved in the movement away from the flashy facades and rustic interiors of the late 19th century towards the priority of amenities for residents and efficiency of construction. These changes influenced development patterns of the way the outer sections of the brokvarter neighborhoods as well as the next ring of perimeter neighborhoods such as Nordvest, Vanløse, Valby, and this study area from 1920-1940. Buildings of this type are described as Welfare Era Blocks of Flats in the typology section of this report.

Sydhavn has a gross neighborhood density of about 178 DU per hectare (72 DU per acre).

Christiania

Christiania is one of Copenhagen’s most famous neighborhoods. It is an autonomous community within Copenhagen in former military base on the south-eastern side of the city harbor. The former barracks and ramparts were occupied in 1971, and in the decades since a remarkable autonomous community has developed. Cars are prohibited, city authorities do not enter, and cannabis is freely sold.

Much of the building stock in Christiania is made up of former military buildings, some dating from the late renaissance when the defensive ramparts were first constructed. These have been liberally converted and adapted by artists and builders, both residents and visitors to the community. They serve as residences but also concert and meeting halls, studios, workshops, and bars and restaurants. The leafy walking paths between homes and common areas give a strong feeling of an enclosed, protected, unique place, while the lively plaza on the southern end is popular with outsiders and tourists for its relaxed atmosphere and food, music, booze and bud.

The occupation of Christiania marks a clear rejection of the trends of increasing government intervention, spatial scale, mass-production and top-down planning of both multi-family housing and the rapidly expanding tracts of single-family houses in the suburbs of the 1960’s and 70’s. In Christiania no two buildings are alike, things are made by hand, simple technology rules, capitalism is viewed warily and decisions are made at the lowest level possible, with only the most important matters elevated to the community as a whole for a consensus-based decision.

With a population of 850 occupying about 34 hectares (84 acres) Christiania has a population density of only 25 per hectare (10 per acre). Property is not bought or sold, but when a new space opens up the community decides who to invite. In a way this process, relying on social rather than financial capital, is similar to the many housing co-operatives in more conventional parts of the city where rent and buy-in costs are affordable, but openings can be hard to come by.

 

Profile: Bellahoj

Bellahoj is housing project consisting of two clusters of residential towers on 2.6 hectares (6.5 acres) located on the western periphery of Copenhagen. These buildings represent an unusual building type in Denmark: the “towers in the park” conceived and promoted by the modernist architect and urban planner, Le Corbusier. They were also influenced by similar designs for public housing that later became popular in Sweden.

The Bellahoj towers stand between 9 and 13 stories tall and are surrounded by landscaped open space including playgrounds and gardens. They also have a large space at the front of the project devoted to surface parking lots. These building were constructed in 1956 as social housing, winners of a design competition to explore innovative building styles for Danish public housing. Each story has two units, which are accessed via central core with stairs and an elevator. The location of the towers on the most significant hill in Copenhagen provides them with expansive views of the city.

The Bellahoj towers are a departure from the the typical style of Danish multi-family housing which usually consists of long, narrow buildings accessed by stairs; to this day they remain among the tallest buildings in the city. They represent a continuation of the trend in government-planned social housing flats toward large scale, rationalist site plans, with weakening relationships to streets and traditional block structures. However, the location of the towers in an idyllic setting, with well designed traditional parks, a nearby pond, and the majestic view of the city gives this development a better connection with its surroundings than many contemporary projects.

The towers continue to serve as social housing and on a walk through their ample greens one can see children and families playing, calling out in many languages. The buildings, like many constructed of concrete in this era, have had maintenance issues including problems with mold, leaks, and rotting window and doorframes. Not counting adjacent parkland, the gross neighborhood density within the development is 127 DU per hectare (51 DU per acre).

That's what the other side of the pond looks like, just so you know.

Sources:

Hiort, Esbjørn. Housing in Denmark since 1930. Copenhagen: J. Gjellerup Forlag, 1952. Print.

Larsen, Jacob N. "From Slum Clearance and Housing Renewal to Networking and Area-based Approaches: On the Origins of Contemporary Danish Urban Development Programmes." On the Origins of Urban Development Programmes in Nine European Countries. Ed. Helle Nørgaard. Antwerp: Garant, 2003. 46-58. Print.

http://www.sab-bolig.dk/da-dk/boligafdelinger/afdelinger-paa-en-liste/bellahoej-i-og-ii.aspx

Profile: Avedøre Stationsby

Nine and a half kilometers (six miles) from the center of the center of the once walled city of Copenhagen, a new walled city, Avedøre Stationsby (Avedore Station City), was erected during the peak of modernist planning and government investment in social housing in the 1970’s. This development covers 53 hectares (131 acres), about 30% less area than the original walled city of Copenhagen. It consists of two story row houses made of concrete cubes arranged in 90 degree angles around partial courtyards and parking areas, surrounded by a continuous wall of four story apartments.

One road passes through the “city” from the north at “Ropemaker’s Gate” and the east where there is a large gap in the apartment wall. The development is arranged around this road, with public institutions located along it and dead-end streets branching out mostly north and south. These form a grid with walking paths that mostly run east and west. Pedestrian paths also extend over the main road, which is sunken in the central portion of the development, with pedestrian bridges. The development is located adjacent to an S-train station with fast, frequent service to central Copenhagen.

Avedøre Stationsby epitomizes the climax of several important trends in housing in Copenhagen: the “finger plan” and the planning of suburban new towns along commuter rail lines; the move towards ever larger, more distant, and more self-contained developments; massive investment by the government in social housing; and the attempt to use rational methods in city planning, architecture, and construction to achieve optimal outcomes in living standards. Its distinctive form points to another nascent trend: an attempt to recreate some element of past urban forms. In this case that form is the walled city, which described Copenhagen in some form until 1867. The project also represents a thoughtful attempt to protect pedestrians from automobiles by providing a well-connected pedestrian network largely independent of vehicular routes.

Avedøre Stationsby contains 2,600 units, giving it a gross neighborhood density of 49 units per hectare (121 units per acre). The planned area includes a significant amount of open green space both outside the “wall” and within, as well as a large area dedicated to surface parking, both reducing the density. There are also child care centers, laundromats, a church, a secondary school, an elementary school, a library, a grocery store and a convenience store within the development and several shops and restaurants are located immediately to the east.

Avedøre Stationsby was one of the last large-scale multi-family suburban social housing projects constructed in greater Copenhagen. With the oil-shocks and financial stagnation of the 1970’s and 80’s the ability of the government to finance such projects declined; at the same time there was a growing cultural rejection of such projects with such a single-minded pursuit of standard of living improvements.

Profile: Norrebro

Like its twin Vesterbro, Nørrebro is one of the brokvarter, a dense neighborhood largely built up during the late-19th century in the height of the industrial revolution. Also like Vesterbro, Nørrebro was targeted by the city in the mid and late 20th century due to crime, derelict and degraded buildings, and the flight of the middle-class. Nørrebro was the city’s first urban renewal district and as such was the recipient of a major investment in slum-clearance and redevelopment in the 1970’s and 80’s.

These programs sought to demolish older tenement buildings, especially courtyard buildings which tended to be of poorer quality and lacked direct access to the street. They were replaced with lower density blocks of flats owned by social housing associations. These buildings tend to be much longer than those they replaced meaning they could dominate entire block-faces, and had unadorned facades, mechanized construction materials and methods, and an overall distant, institutional character. They also had far fewer units than in the razed tenements, exacerbating a growing housing shortage.

This process of demolition and redevelopment saw a backlash in the 1980’s, both by typical neighborhood residents and a group of disaffected youth who, in the absence of affordable housing, took to squatting in many of the condemned buildings. Attempts by the city to evict the squatters lead to a series of clashes between these youth, who came to be known as the BZ, and the city throughout the 80’s, 90’s and aughts over urban renewal programs, including several large scale riots and street clashes with police. Later urban renewal programs abandoned this approach in favor of investments in existing building stock, in addition to investments in public areas and community organizations.

Nørrebro today remains a gritty neighborhood. Many buildings are covered in graffiti and a large Muslim immigrant population has made the district its home. At the same time, gentrification in the sections of the neighborhood closest to downtown has already displaced some of the low-income population. The neighborhood is a mix of restored late 19th century buildings and 70's-80's social housing blocks, with a few heavy traffic arteries crossing through.

The neighborhood around Superkilen park epitomizes the district, with the award-winning park, a large community center with a wealth of inventive programs, and a public library all within a block of each other. The park lies at the junction of two major bike routes, a bus route, and is two blocks south of an elevated S-train light rail line. The park incorporates objects and outdoor furniture from many different countries, in an attempt to reflect and embrace the national diversity of the people that make use of the park. It is a bit cluttered and disorganized, like the district itself, and it well-loved by local residents and tourists alike.

The population in the 4.1 km2  of Nørrebro is 79,700 making it the most populated district in the city, with a density of 19,440 per km2 (50,350 per sq mi), which lies somewhere between the boroughs of Manhattan and Brooklyn, New York City. The old sections of the neighborhood has an urban form that it difficult to describe objectively. It feels geometric. I think it is right in the sweet spot between the buildings dominating and the open spaces dominating. There is enclosure. It feels as though the open spaces have been subtracted from the mass, rather than that the buildings have been added to a void. I haven't done any 3-D modelling for this project but these buildings make me want to. I don't know if there is any other way to capture it.

The Continent

I’m back in Copenhagen. It took about 22 hours longer than expected plus a detour to the UK to get back in. I really had no idea if I was going to be able to get back as I traveled by bus the 60 miles between the Stansted and Gatwick airports (about 12% of the whole length of England) on the outskirts of London yesterday night. I believe I am here legally and was entitled to enter, but only due to a specific Denmark-USA bilateral agreement, the nuances of which are not well known or much cared about by other countries.

London Bridge!

I was warned about and discouraged from going to Turkey at all due to the instability, terrorism and refugee influx in that country in the past few years. The only effect of these on my trip however were in the extreme security at the airport, where the airline employees were not all interested in the nuances of Danish immigration law and would not let me board the plane. I thought that it would be easier to get into Denmark from the UK and ultimately that worked out.

So! I’m back, after my three week sojourn through central Europe, to the very edge of south-eastern Europe, finally crossing over the recently renamed 15th of July Martyrs Bridge across the Bosphorous to get to an Istanbul airport on the Asian side. I crossed all over land as far as Montenegro, and in doing so performed something of a north-to-south transect of the middle portion of Europe, from the Baltic to the Adriatic. A transect is a tool used by geographers, biologists, landscape architects and urban planners to collect data and create a conceptual model of the range of environments (including urban environments).

I wasn’t rigorously collecting data on anything, but I was aware of progressive changes in language, culture, built environments, transportation systems, basic economic transactions, and certain government functions like border control; basically all the things you interact with when you are travelling. Travelling alone makes it quite a bit easier to be observant of such minutia because, you know, you don't have anyone to talk to. I compiled some maps crudely showing the changes in these qualities I experienced as I traveled in a previous post.

So I got to see a whole range of qualities that make the continent of Europe “continental”. When you are travelling you always get to see and feel what is familiar and what is different. Copenhagen is a good place to start out because it feels pretty familiar. Some combination of it being a small country, a wealthy country, a country with a near-universal level of English as a second language, and perhaps being a country that was most often an outside observer of the traumatic episodes of 20th century European history seem to make it particularly accessible to an American like me.

Travelling south much of what seemed familiar from home gradually disappeared. As I got deep into the continent the USA felt more and more distant. Germany is fascinating partly because it feels like an alternate reality version of the USA. Prague was suddenly Catholic (if only nominally) after three months in subdued and self-conscious Protestant lands. The deeper you go into Hapsburg lands (Prague, Vienna, Zagreb but not Munich) you get a new diversity of cultural influences in which German is a strong element but Italian, Slavic and other cultures are also key. In Yugoslavia you have a mess of cultures with the same background and mostly the same language, but each looking outwards towards somewhere else: Slovenia to Germany, Croatia to Italy, Serbia to Russia, Bosnia to Turkey, Kosovo to Albania, (those are gut-level generalizations, half of which are about places I haven't even been). Finally in Turkey you get the crazy mashup of the Islamic Middle East, the Roman Empire, and the medieval christian Mediterranean world. The built legacies of each of these roots mixing and overlapping while the cultural elements of the latter two are mostly gone due to 20th century nationalism and ethnic purification, some sort of which also characterized all of the other countries I passed though. Peculiarly, while this was happening I began to notice a different kind of familiarity. More and more I got flashbacks to places I’ve been in Latin America: long bus rides through rural lands and villages, the insufferable tourist economy of Santo Domingo, the glorious coast of Chile in winter, the old crumbling downtown of Asuncion, the elegant and lively but also sort of crumbling colonial quarter of Mexico City.

I can think of three main reasons for the relationship these distant places.
First: the change from upper-income economies to middle-income economies.
Turkey, Croatia, Bosnia and Montenegro are considered to be “Upper-Middle Income” countries. They’re pretty developed and industrialized but there is also quite a bit of informality in the way economic transactions and government interactions take place that felt similar to places in Latin America. The democratic institutions also seem to work (or not work) in a more or less similar way, the culture is a bit more conservative and religion is taken more seriously.

I really like travelling in middle-income countries. It’s easy to get around because buses go everywhere, also the buses aren't completely awful so you're comfortable enough, prices are relatively cheap so you feel rich, there’s still clear connections to past ways of doing things which is charming, there aren’t nearly as many rules so you can have more fun (just be respectful!!!) and the population is doing okay overall so you don’t have to feel like shit for being American (BUT there is still a wealth gap between tourists and locals so the tourist economy is more prominent and obnoxious.) It would be interesting to write a book about all the middle income countries. It is remarkable how similarly things work in Croatia and Mexico; even the visual appearance of these places is similar because the economies of scale, the types of materials and manufactured goods available, and the relationship between wages and materials.  

Second: the Climate. The Mediterranean climate is the most perfect for human thriving I think. It being November there was a nice crispness and coolness to the air, but the sun usually came out too and warmed things up. There are trees but not too many so you have long, unobstructed views. Fruit, wine and fish are plentiful and cheap. In the summer there is water you can jump into (I even went swimming briefly in the Adriatic Sea while in Croatia). The interiors of buildings are not so nice and there isn’t much climate control because it’s generally nicer to be outside anyhow, so you are better connected with nature in a way and feel healthier and saner overall. Specifically Croatia reminded me a lot of the middle part of Chile, which is also quite nice, though the Pacific is a bit more boisterous than the Adriatic.

Why would you be inside?

   
Third: Continentalness.
This was the thing I was thinking about when I started writing this post, and it’s really the first of these three that I started noticing. It was especially strong in Vienna, where I really felt these strong echoes from from the historic downtown cores of Asunción (Paraguay), Salta (Argentina), Santiago (Chile), and Mexico City. That’s funny because they’re sort of reverse echoes. As far as I can tell, Vienna and Paris were the two poles of a cultural sphere in continental Europe for a period of time when that culture was the most prestigious and influential in the world. I am thinking especially of the period from the 1840’s to 1914, but we could probably start counting from 1750 or earlier. Due to the result of WWI Vienna never really rose past that peak of prominence and grandeur and it was preserved in a way; unlike Paris which continued to grow and has remained one of the cultural capitals of the world.


An important practice in studying history is to isolate the situation in which the subject came into being from whatever came after. This is very true of studying urban morphology because of the permanence of elements of the built environment. What were the architectural, economic, governmental, social realities at the moment that this building was built? They are going to tell you an awful lot about why it is the way it is.

The old downtown cores of the Latin American cities I mentioned all had their heyday in that period from the mid-19th century up until the early 20th century. (Generally this was the laissez faire period in the economies of these countries which enriched the elites who lived in the capitals. Argentina went through its period of outrageous economic growth then too, while Asuncion had it’s heyday in the 1860’s before the War of the Triple Alliance when the dictator Francisco Solano Lopez was enamoured with Napoleon III’s imperial Paris.) So the most important global culture at that time was continental Europe and the elites who shaped these cities were very consciously looking abroad for cultural models that they assumed were to superior to ones indigenous to their own countries.

After war, revolution, economic stagnation and/or economic nationalization these old downtown cores declined in their practical importance and wealth but maintained a tarnished splendor and cultural cachet. The influence of 19th and early 20th century continental European was maintained in the urban culture and built environment these cities too, and in funny ways got transmitted and adapted by the national cultural of each country. The use of continental style electrical outlets and bidets in rural Paraguay is one an example of some of those minutia. There’s also the pompous historicist and neo-classical public sculptures and architecture you see in Mexico City and Santiago. And there is the global culture of the hotel, glorified in the movie The Grand Budapest Hotel which I think comes from this period too, and of which I’ve gotten to glimpse the low-budget aspirations in Asuncion, Mexico, Zagreb, and most recently Istanbul, where the concierge politely addressed me as Monsieur.

the big three-oh

I spent today walking around Istanbul, just like I’ve done for the two previous days. Tuesday I saw the site of the old Roman Hippodrome with its 3,500 year old Egyptian Obelisk, the Sultanahmet Camii or “Blue Mosque”, the museum of the mosaics of Justinian’s Palace (6th century AD), the old great bazaar and adjacent market districts, the Galata Bridge (thronged with fishers), and finally the Galata Tower before riding the tram back to my hotel.

Wednesday I walked west past the site of the ruins of the forum of Theodosius, past Istanbul University, to stop in at the Kalenderhane Mosque which used to be a Byzantine church, then walked along the Valens Aqueduct (in used for over 1000 years until the 19th century), through another smaller market district and the Fatih Mosque complex, to the seat of the Orthodox Patriarch of Constantinople (the first-among equals among the heads of Orthodox Christian churches worldwide) in the Church of St. George, to the church of St. Mary of the Mongols (the only Byzantine church that was never converted to a mosque), through the (formerly) Greek neighborhood of Fener, past one of the Roman cisterns which now serves as a soccer stadium, to the still standing Walls of Theodosius, which are about four and a half kilometers from my hotel. I was able to mount a tower in a partially restored section of the walls near the Edirne Gate and enjoy a view of the city in every direction, it having spilled out of its old shell in the last century and grown thirty times in size. I walked along the old walls to a 13th century Byzantine palace, where I peered in the gate. The caretaker was standing nearby and told me that it was closed, but that he would let me in “special”. I got to walk all around the ruins of the grounds and the still-standing palace and tower, which are being restored and are due to open next year. That’s about all the information I could get from the caretaker, due to my total lack of Turkish and his very limited English. He wouldn’t let me take any pictures and refused a tip as I was leaving. From there I walked down to the waterfront along the Golden Horn, the famous harbor of the city. It occurred to me a moment too late to hop on the ferry that stopped nearby. I walked back towards the center until I hopped on a bus which went something like the right direction. After the bus turned away from my direction I still had about a kilometer walk through what turned out to be a luxury shopping district, with incredible displays of clothes and shoes down a semi-pedestrianized street. I was again quite tired when I got back.

Today I walked to the Hagia Sofia. After exasperating and costly confusion about the process for joining a tour group I ended up with a ridiculous, sleazy, not-particularly knowledgeable guide. Whatever it took to get in it was worth it. I spent about three hours in that wonderful building. All the things they say about it are true, the ceiling really does fell as though it’s floating above. You can feel the emperors and sultans in their, just as awed as everyone else. From the Hagia Sofia I walked through the great bazaar again and finished up my souvenir shopping. I walked up to the Suleymaniye Camii. It’s the second largest mosque in the city and generally considered to be the most perfect. I would concur with this assessment. After briefly visiting the tomb of Suleiman the Great I was fortunate to get into the mosque shortly before it was closed for the evening to visitors, and see the final light of the sun come in through the western windows. I walked down the hill towards the water, through a neighborhood of terrifyingly degraded old wooden houses. I bought fresh squeezed pomegranate juice for 35 cents and a kebab sandwich for 60 cents. Once I reached the harbor I hopped on a ferry, not knowing where it went. It was dusk, rush-hour, there were ferries going everywhere and I saw on the upper back deck and it was lovely. They served hot tea on the ferry for 45 cents. The ferry landed on the Asian side of the Bosphorus. I had some trouble finding a ferry that went back in the right direction, and ended up riding back quite a bit north on the European side then catching a bus and the tram back towards the hotel. Another long good day.

I am exceedingly fortunate to get to spend my birthday in such a special place. This is my thirtieth birthday. A decade spent wandering comes to a close at the navel of the world. I have lived in many places, I have held many jobs, visited many cities. I have had a few lovers as well. It has been a restless ten years.

That’s how I wanted it. In my youth I spent my time thinking of far away places in old parts of the world (and other planets). When I read Kerouac it was so exciting partly because it was empowering: I could travel, simply, and take pleasure and learn from the simple things, the land, the buildings, the cities, the streets and buses, the music, the booze, the bus-stations and train terminals at the wrong hour of night.

I started travelling a little more than ten years ago when I took off from my house-painting job to go visit Calli in California on the train in July, 2006. A few months later I set out across the country, making it from Seattle to Boston by way of bus, train, rides with family and hitching, then flew home on the generosity of my mother. I spent the rest of that fall working at the grocery store, working at the coffee roasterie, delivering newspapers, baking bread, reading Walden, and killing English Ivy in the woods. (I played computer games and watched the Daily Show then too.)

The next summer I went to Korea with Calli and her dad, to teach English, learn to ride a motorcycle, visit Buddhist temples, and make out on basalt cliffs at dusk while the lights of the squid fishing fleet appeared one by one on the horizon.

The next spring I went to the Dominican Republic where I learned to speak Spanish, dance, and drink rum. I played chess with Andrew Shaw Kitch in the shade by the blue Caribbean water, and drank beer and rum, and talked about rock and roll, and danced in the shelter of overlapping awnings with Dominican women on a rainy night in Rio San Juan.
I graduated graduated from college and my father financed a trip to visit Erika in Cuenca, Ecuador. We ate mangoes and avocados and walked through waterfalls and then back to town in the warm night sounds of the forest while glow worms dangled from the branches. We hunted for mushrooms and then ate them on the side of a mountain, and got lost, and then found, and rode with a woman along crazy mountain roads in the real fog as we tried to remember who we were and how to speak Spanish and how we got to South America on the way back to the city.
I joined Americorps the next summer with other city kids and we went into the Oregon woods and learned to use chainsaws and got rained on and smelled bad and cooked for each other.
After our term of service was up I travelled south and east over land with a backpack like I had four years before. I ended up in Lincoln, Nebraska, where I stayed with my old friend Brendan and met a young woman with beautiful big brown cow eyes.
I joined the Peace Corps towards the end of that winter and I went to Paraguay for the next two and one third years. I lived with families, had a house, built a wood stove, taught kids to read, fell in love, got run out of town, had a new house, built a new woodstove, and helped start a library. I got to know lovely people, got to feel at home in that country, and then I left and crossed the big Chaco wasteland, went up over the Andes and down the coast of Chile to Santiago before I flew home.
I came back to Vashon and slept in a comfortable bed, drank coffee, walked the beach and spent time around colorful people. I went to a wedding out East and saw New York city again and upstate and was with old friends from South America. I eventually found a job worth doing and applied to graduate school and didn’t really get in but started taking classes anyway.

I signed up for a study trip to Oaxaca, Mexico, where we ate non-hallucinogenic mushrooms in a mountain village and learned about old ways.
I got into grad school. I found a strange old warehouse to live in with other strange people. I decorated my room with a tie-dye lace tablecloth, an oriental rug, the words of Whitman, old shells and bottle caps and pictures of saints and a bottle of wine with a picture of a girl on it. I got a grant to come to Europe, where I got to do work that I thought was interesting and use skills that I felt good at.

These last ten years I have worked as an after school/summer-camp teacher, a community engagement coordinator, a pedicab driver, a Unitarian Sunday school teacher, a dendro-chronology lab technician and project manager, a freelance weed-puller and hole-digger, a Peace Corps volunteer (which is twelve jobs in itself), an Americorps member, a Salvation Army bell-ringer, a house-painter, a reading tutor, a groundskeeping assistant, an English teacher, a roastmaster’s assistant, a newspaper deliverer, a grocery bagger, a projectionist and theater cashier in something like that order. I love to learn how to do a new thing and to work in a new place. I have worked, but I have not earned my keep. I have amassed massive loan debt and relied often on the stability and generosity of others, especially my parents. If the measure of adulthood is to be able to cover your costs and more, I have yet to reach it.  

It's been ten years of movement and constantly shifting directions. I’m an unpredictable element. I am unattached; an unknown entity; a potentially dangerous free radical. At worst, I lose track of my own story, and it all starts to feel like just a bunch of random events. And an adult male is always a potential danger to others. An unattached one the more so, as he has less to lose. The male energy is vital, powerful, but without a direction and a purpose that energy poses a risk to others and to its host. These next ten years I hope to build. To build means one can’t always move around, try a new thing, slip off into the night. It is probably dull much of the time. Perhaps it is not! I do not know what my prospects for family life are but I know they are better if I am stable. I have as good a chance as one can ask for in life, if I can simply finish that degree and start that career. My own idiosyncrasy and my broad but strange work experience have not made it easy for me to find jobs in the past. When I find something either it is either temporary and ends or I head of to some other adventure. However, I feel immensely capable. I am somewhat unprepared to imagine a regular, long-term, middle-class job. Probably I should not get ahead of myself! But one must set goals and one must take steps to achieve them. I want to find work that is meaningful, challenging, and remunerative. I need to establish something stable, to develop long-term relationships, to build trust. This next decade will be the story of how that goes.