Q: You’re an environmental, land use and real estate attorney by trade, and yet you also work deeply and passionately within the realm of urban planning. How did that come about?
Chuck:
I’m the son of an urban planner, and while I always said I’d never want to do exactly what my dad did, after 30-plus years of practicing law, I’m essentially doing exactly what my dad did. Around 2009, in the midst of my law career, I began to look at our regulatory and planning processes a lot more critically—and with much greater regard to how the things that I observed were really mattering to people. Eventually, this passion led me to write my book, "Seeing the Better City," as a way to help people leverage our sensory and human capabilities, and apply them in helpful and useable ways.
Q: How can Cleveland and its urban core benefit from the approach you advocate in your book?
Chuck:
I sense that Cleveland is like so many American cities—it’s both simultaneously growing around its many vaunted institutions, and there’s portions bordering many of those institutions that don’t necessarily benefit from those assets. It’s an uneven balance. Similarly, a city like Cleveland has varieties of change that aren’t aggressively or dramatically manifest. I come from the perspective of someone who lives in an off-the-charts boomtown like Seattle where those changes are front and center, so when I visit Cleveland or many other cities around the world, I’m reminded of what’s real in terms of that unevenness of economic development and parity.
In this regard, my book is very much about perspective and orientation. It uses several cities as foils, but spends a lot of time helping people cope with urban change—whether it’s a positive or negative change. It helps people deconstruct what they feel when they see something that gives them positive or negative feelings. It’s about existing in the gray areas of reality. I see direct parallels between the steps I recommend for understanding place within urban environments and the environments I’ve seen here during my brief visit to Cleveland. I hope the ideas I present in the book can, in some small way or ways, help residents and leaders here continue their journeys toward establishing strong places in which to live, work and play.
Q: Was "Seeing the Better City" written solely for urban planning professionals?
Chuck:
It’s actually not. It’s intended to be universally read by professionals and non-professionals alike and help everyone see things from different perspectives. Planners sometimes tend to get caught up in processes and formulas. I believe the human factor, and human perspective, is key to improving cities.
Q: In your presentation, you used the phrase, “Learn to get lost.” For those who weren’t able to attend, can you explain what do meant by that?
Chuck:
It’s an important facet of learning about a place intimately and immersing oneself. I was describing the 19
th
century Parisian
flâneur
(from the French noun flâneur; flânerie is the act of strolling, with all of its accompanying associations) who believed that cities weren’t solely about the facilitation of commercialism, but rather were about situations, daily interactions and irregularities. So what that phrase essentially means is, to really understand a city, don’t view it through a one-dimensional perspective go the road less traveled, get lost, and see what’s really going on.
Q: In that regard, so many of us in today’s information age are immersed in our smartphones and have access to information that can structure our urban experiences and daily lives literally on a minute-by-minute basis. Do you feel like the challenge you pose to us all is particularly difficult?
Chuck:
No, because I think people are remembering that there’s something lost in all that. In fact, I’ve found my message to be extremely well-received and welcomed.
Q: Tell us more about ways that the ideas in your book can be applied in underserved neighborhoods.
Chuck:
We may not all have access to expensive cameras or smartphones; but good old-fashioned disposable cameras can still be used. There are approaches that can be used in underserved communities to raise consciousness about realities there. People always ask me how my ideas can be implemented and what the platform looks like. I believe the pivot is that we must force whomever is in charge of change, from developers and planners to politicians, to listen to messages from the community—and those messages must be delivered
by
the community. Not proctored; not through a visual preference survey. You need to get resident stories and resident photographs in front of those people. We need to go beyond grass-roots and even electronic forms of outreach and empower people like Donald Black Jr. (photographer and co-presenter at the event) who use their own powers of observation, intellect, creative drive and sense of place to compel people to see things they otherwise wouldn’t see. That’s when change starts to happen.
Q: Is the Amazon.com-inspired Seattle “the better city” by most accounts?
Chuck:
It is for some, but it’s not for others. It leaves many people behind, it’s driving up housing prices, it has a lot of people very upset about the city they perceive they’ve “lost,” and in Seattle and elsewhere – including Cleveland – we must find a way to empower voices that aren’t part of the process. That’s not easy to do. Yet the processes outlined in the book can be modified to encompass a variety of approaches specific to a given neighborhood.
Q: So isn’t “…the better city” a relative concept?
Chuck:
It is.
Q: Why did you choose this as the title of the book?
Chuck:
To make people really stop and think about what it means. In the end, maybe the better city is the city that resonates best with the viewer. In this regard, people should show others what they mean. I want people to take that '
show me what you mean' step.
Q: What do you hope people come away with after reading this book?
Chuck:
The perspective of the observer is key to understanding the dynamics of urban space, so my intent in writing this book has been to demonstrate to those who experience cities how they might catalog the influences of urban form, neighborhood dynamics, public transportation and other basic elements that impact their daily lives. It’s also intended to help planners and elected officials use their observations to contribute to better planning and design decisions. This is meant as an empowering book; I hope it will help repair some of the shortfalls in our current processes and give a voice to people who might not have it currently in a very simple way.
