Thread by @NanaimoCommons

William H. Whyte: The Under-Appreciated Urban Patriarch governing.com/assessments/wi…

"Every great advance has come about, and always will, because someone was frustrated by the status quo; because someone exercised the skepticism, the questioning, and the kind of curiosity which, to borrow a phrase, blows the lid off everything. " — William H. Whyte

American Urbanist
How William H. Whyte's Unconventional Wisdom Reshaped Public Life @WilliamHWhyte @IslandPress shar.es/af6JfZ

The Exploding Metropolis, 1957
edited by William H. Whyte books.google.ca/books?id=38qP6…

City: Rediscovering the Center, 1988 was Whyte’s last major work.

In the city “truly critical negotiations” can be done “informally, on common meeting grounds equally accessible to both parties.” 1/2

These places, such as restaurants, coffee shops, even street corners, “are the heart of the city’s intelligence networks, and a company that cuts itself off from them loses something that no electronic system can ever provide.” #3rdPlaces 2/2

Ch9 Preserving the last Landscape, 1968

In studying organizations, Whyte had exposed folklore masquerading as scientific thought. In land use he quickly discovered similar forms of “scientism” creeping into the discussion. 1/3

Whyte cited a traffic safety [study] which had determined “to increase safety when vehicles leave the pavement a recovery zone... should be provided along the roadway 30ft or more from the edge of the travelled way in rural areas. Corrective programs should be undertaken...” 2/3

Result was the wanton felling of trees throughout the country. Whyte noted the committee’s own research cited a study of 507 vehicle accidents. Trees were involved in 13. In the vast majority—326—out-of-control vehicles had struck a man-made highway structure of some sort. 3/3

Ch7 The Exploding Metropolis—Discovering Jane Jacobs. Jacobs' Downtown is for People essay was included in Whyte’s 1958 book It places Jacobs in context of others studying the postwar city, including critical analysis of the mayor-city manager model by Seymour Freedgood.

Before Robert Moses became favorite whipping boy of urban advocates, before Jane Jacobs joined forces fighting his plans for Washington Square Park, The Exploding Metropolis identified Moses as the man who held 10 jobs in New York City + State, including chair of 2 authorities.

“As suburbia expands, furthermore, the journey to work is going to be a longer one for many people, new highways or no, and the compensations less.” – Whyte, 1958

“The city is not for the average now; and the way things are going it is not likely to be so in the future. . . . In one key respect, ‘middle income’ projects are unsatisfactory: middle-income people can’t afford them.” The Exploding Metropolis, 1958

The publication of Jacobs’ essay, with an endorsement from Whyte and others, led to the Rockefeller Foundation grant which let her take a one year leave from her post at Architectural Forum to research and write The Death and Life of Great American Cities.

RT @PlacemakingX The roots of the #placemaking movement track back to this impactful, and still relevant, 1958 article #DowntownIsForPeople, by #JaneJacobs published by #WilliamHWhyte 🧵

"Whyte + Jacobs possessed complementary skills. Jacobs’ books soared w/ lyrical descriptions of physical spaces + theoretical ideas. “Eyes on the street,” the “sidewalk ballet” became lasting instructive images of good urbanism. But she balked at more rigorous empirical studies."

"In studying organizations, Whyte had exposed folklore masquerading as scientific thought." Whyte and Jacobs shared an aversion to the pseudo-scientific, to unquestioned received wisdom.

Whyte’s discussion of "new towns" in The Last Landscape 1968 was, as Jane Jacobs wrote in a blurb for the 1970 paperback edition, “the definitive discussion of the subject.”

“Urbanity is not something that can be lacquered on; it is the quality produced by the great concentration of diverse functions and a huge market to support the diversity. The center needs a large hinterland, but it cannot be in the hinterland; it must be in the center.” #WHWhyte

RT @alexbozikovic Seems like a lot of folks in Toronto need to read Holly Whyte.

The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces, Whyte via @YouTube

Ch9 Preserving the Last Landscape, Rural and Urban

"Whyte wasn’t counting on the dream of a truly self-contained community ever being built from scratch. In not one of the new town plans he studied had he ever seen space allotted for a cemetery."

During organizing for the first Earth Day on April 22 1970, Whyte met @Fred_Kent one of Whyte’s first disciples and the man who for more than 40yrs would lead @PPS_Placemaking still one of the leading legacies of Whyte’s urbanism. – Ch11 ... A Radical Plan for New York City

Ch13 The Art of Small Urban Spaces

People naturally gather at #StreetCorners. The same is true of the corners of a plaza. “You’ll see satellite groups and conversations at the curb and the corners. Plazas should tie into it.”

We can vastly increase the amount of useful space for people, more plazas, street space, nooks + oases; for merchants + businesses + everyone else. It would be a lot better if we did… there’d be more of what gives the city its edge—more shmoozing, picnicking, kooks + screwballs.

Thread :: The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces

#WHWhyte offered a checklist for any city planner designing a public space: street access, seating, sun, water, trees, food, and an opportunity for triangulation, when strangers are prompted to talk to one another as if they were friends. – The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces

Urban public space :: "capacity is self-regulating" #WHWhyte

“By giving away land to parkers, or renting it for a pittance,” #WHWhyte wrote, “cities are squandering some of the most valuable real estate that they have.”
– City : Rediscovering the Centre 2009

“Now coming of age,” Whyte wrote, “is a whole generation of planners and architects for whom the formative experience of a center was the atrium of a suburban shopping mall."

#WHWhyte The Organization Man

:: @ctr4livingcity #JaneJacobs Lecture.

A conversation with journalist, urban activist, Richard K. Rein author of the new book American Urbanist — How William H. Whyte’s Unconventional Wisdom Reshaped Public Life. @YouTube