SAN JOAQUIN VALLEY REGIONAL BLUEPRINT UNDERSTANDING OF URBAN DESIGN

There are many different interpretations of what an urban designer actually does as a mission. This discipline is conducted as a minority it seems at present amongst all the other designers found in rural, suburban, city and regional settings.

Why even citizens are designers amongst urban planners, civil engineers, politicians, bureaucrats, sociologists, scientists, biologists, financiers, architects, journalists, real estate developers, appraisers, artists, landscape architects, economists, realtors, bankers, environmentalists and farmers.

It is a list so long that one must draw the conclusion that every human being is capable of both urban design and visions of what future habitation should become.

As pragmatist’s, most urban designers are continually bumped and bruised, but pains aside, they have the advantage of realizing, as a matter of fact, that things either exist...or they do not. And things that come into existence out of things envisioned usually don't exist for very long, despite the feelings and emotions of optimists, pessimists, idealists, illusionists and the politbureau.

To quote some good words: - “It is almost impossible to carry the torch of (“design”) truth through a crowd without singeing somebody's beard.” -George Christopher Lichtenberg, scientist and philosopher (1742-1799)

Rationality and logic in the face of the history of practical application precedes urban design experience. Urban Designers are often asked to look into the glass ball of the future. This means taking a great risk in suggesting new technology assessment that might be applicable, with personal creative visions in combination with other human’s mental pictures.

Some formulas of old may not be applicable for future use anymore. So what behavioral changes need to be made in future regional design? What principles apply in the following values and identity for visions? Design answers to more than a physical land plan. The primary question is who in fact will lead us in balancing our building desires with nature’s dominant environmental cycles?

Indicators or measures have to be applied to evaluate the worth found in competitive design patterns. Consider an urban design measured for the following: -

PRINCIPLE ONE: - How do we clean the air?

PRINCIPAL TWO: - What water shortages will grip Great Valley citizens?

PRINCIPLE THREE: - How do we ensure agricultural food and fiber production?

PRINCIPLE FOUR: - How will we provide energy via electricity in a network of self sufficiency that will not be open to brownouts?

PRINCIPLE SIX: - How will we accommodate forecasted population growth in the Great Valley and offer better mobility for both people and goods?

PRINCIPLE SEVEN: - How does the Great Valley efficiently use it’s own natural resources to build future settlement structures?

PRINCIPLE EIGHT: - How are all our consumptive products handled in order to reduce waste?

PRINCIPLE NINE: - How do we swiftly give citizens protection in the way of security, safety and justice with meaningful actions?

PRINCIPLE TEN: - How do we accommodate our urban design of settlements to best balance man-made structure with that of Nature?

PRINCIPLE ELEVEN: - The wealth – poverty gap is widening between the rural, city and suburban citizens. How do we stabilize both work and/or jobs with a base value for sustainability?

PRINCIPLE TWELVE: -How do we make decisions for unanimity in such a democracy of building sustainable places?

In Abrams v. United Sates (1919), Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes addresses our values, vision and identity of free expression. It is a matter more of faith than of demonstrated principles. He wrote this: (People) may come to believe.....that the ultimate good desired is better reached by free trade in ideas – that the best test of truth is the power of thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market, and that truth is the only ground upon which their wishes safely can be carried out. That, at any rate, is the theory of our Constitution. It is an experiment, as all life is an experiment”.

It is the fervent hope of all urban designers to accept challenges where this noble experiment can flourish. Let interdisciplinary interaction be the cornerstone of future settlements. Thought is the blossom; language the bud; action the fruit behind it. -Ralph Waldo Emerson, writer and philosopher (1803-1882)

This is where new regional urban design should be explored for the Great San Joaquin Valley Blueprint. It is the mind maps of a team of interdisciplinary designers webbed together with metric measure of energy requirement inputs vs. greenhouse gas emission outputs, in all it’s synthesized G.I.S. land design layers of creativity.

Who will lead us in these urban design boundaries to sustainability?

Graham Kaye-Eddie

Master Urban Designer