The driving consensus of Drawing ⁄ Thinking isthat the digital productivity mindset exacts too higha design price when it displaces better equippedmodes of manually graphic thinking, and learning.But another theme echoed by many of the volume’scontributors explores the ‘‘deeply complementary’’potential for using either medium as a critical foilfor the other’s shortcomings. The real work ofembracing the new generation of digital informationmodeling, whose explicit aim is to close the gapbetween figment and fact, involves an equalconviction to mind the gap between what we knowand the imaginatively productive because willinglysuspended disbelief of what we do not know. To dootherwise would precipitate another untimely‘‘failure of imagination’’ in the heart of our mostcreative labor of thinking, overlooking both ourstudents’ and our own interests in the rush to shortterm deliverables. Confronting this electronic age,we would perhaps do well to take the real virtualityof our drawings’ most uncertain fantasies far moreseriously.

Robert A. Svetz

Note

1. Elizabeth Diller, ‘‘Autobiographical Notes,’’ in The Activist Drawing,

ed. Catherine de Zheger and Mark Wigley (New York: NY Drawing

Center, 2001).

Everyday UrbanismJOHN LEIGHTON CHASE, MARGARET CRAWFORDand JOHN KALISKI, editorsMonacelli Press, 2008224 pages, illustrated$45.00 (paper)

This new edition expands upon theories andobservations of everyday urbanism first publishedalmost a decade ago, transforming what was adocumentary sourcebook into a user-friendlyhandbook for a new kind of urban intervention.Everyday urbanism is defined as the common,

repetitive, or spontaneous actions that take place inthe interstitial spaces between well-definedterritories of home, work and institution, as when ayard sale transforms a lawn into a venue foreconomic exchange. In the first edition of EverydayUrbanism taking out the trash, food vending, streetmusic, and casual meetings within mini-parks werethe exemplars of the title, and they are in the newedition as well. These examples establish theterritory of everyday urbanism, calling out andidentifying opportunities for designers to intervenein interstitial, often banal locations.

Everyday urbanism may be easy to notice butbecause its modest interactions are characterized byspontaneous programming, it is all but impossible toplan in a formal or bureaucratic sense. Nonetheless,the new edition offers several projects thatdemonstrate how everyday urbanism can berealized, from concept to design andimplementation. ‘‘The Space Formerly Known asParking’’ details how parking spaces can be turned

into micro-parks, suggesting three possibletypologies: dog parks, gym parks, or skate parks.Such programs are perfectly suited to the WestHollywood strip that John Chase documents earlierin the book, but they raise certain questions. Thebook’s first edition included an essay by urbanlandscape designer Walter Hood that, along withseveral others, defined everyday urbanismspecifically for different types of users in differenttypes of cities. And Hood, in particular, criticizedmany of the elements Chase advocates – drinkingfountains, seating, dog-walking amenities – asbeing derived from normative middle-classexpectations of urban interactions. Authentic, or atleast comprehensive, everyday urbanism mustembrace a broader notion of urban occupation.While the new edition visualizes how everydayurbanism can be developed and designed, most ofits examples seem to serve and reflect theaspirations of that upscale socioeconomic groupthat has colonized so many urban areas in the pasttwo decades.

Two new essays do address the concerns ofthose outside the middle class. In ‘‘DefiningMinicity,’’ John Kalinksi examines the ongoingtypological evolution of the shopping mall in LosAngeles, revealing how specific retail types servedthe specific retail needs of a diverse population. In‘‘The Painted Sign Pictures of Latino Los Angeles,’’James Rojas and John Chase showcase the hand-painted wall murals that function as bothcommunication and art, and stand in markedcontrast to the slick, mass-produced billboardsgenerally associated with the auto-oriented strips ofL.A. While both essays demonstrate acuteobservation with significant documentary appeal, itis disappointing that they offer no criticalperspective on how the shifting scales and uses ofmalls or the graphic boldness of signs helps toshape the 21st century city. Such a perspectivewould enhance the volume’s utility, especially fordesigners seeking to foster everyday urbanism,

157 REVIEWS | BOOKS

advocate for it or, at the very least, operatewithin it.

Happily, the presentation of two projects in therevised edition succeeds in this regard, notablybecause the projects themselves stand out asexemplary practices of everyday urbanism.‘‘WiMBY!’’ or Welcome to my Backyard is a projectof the Crimson Architectural Historians, a Dutchresearch and design collective working on theredevelopment of Hoogvliet, a post-war new townnear Rotterdam. For a period of six years Crimsonworked with local residents and officials to organizefestivals and events, design and build parks andrecreation areas, create a brand image for the town,and plan for future architecture and construction.WiMBY! directly engaged the community through agame called ‘‘Logica’’ that allowed planningdecisions to be made through citizen and designerdiscourse. Crimson’s WiMBY! approach isstraightforward but exacting, and the collectivecautions that it may not be appropriate for allcircumstances: first, take stock of the conditions,understand the current programs, wishes, anddemands that already exist, and together aim topresent architecture, art and landscape projects thatpresent a convincing image of the new future. Aspresented in this volume, WiMBY! is a pragmaticand useful method for cultivating everydayurbanism through design.

‘‘101 Urban Salvations’’ documents an urbanplanning studio Margaret Crawford conducted atthe Harvard Graduate School of Design in 2007. Thebasis of the studio was a deceptively simpleproposition for improving the GSD’s home town:‘‘Cambridge would be a better place to live if…’’Residents were asked to fill in the blank and theplanning students winnowed the results, whichranged from the politically mundane to thearchitecturally visionary, into a list of 101 real andideal ways to improve local livability. ‘‘101 UrbanSalvations’’ highlights and articulates ways toenhance the everyday, but it also frames thediscussion as a continuing dialogue with the public

via a blog. As in the WiMBY! approach, thecommunity is given a strategic design voice.

If everyday urbanism renounces expertise andrelies instead upon a democratic and inclusiveprocess of generating, considering, critiquing andimplementing urban design, how is everydayurbanism initiated? Is everything everydayurbanism? Is everyone a designer? While inclusiveinquiries give everyone in the community a voice inurban design, everyday urbanists aren’t simplycurators of a community wish list. They arestrategists who put forward critical ideas thatneighborhoods can respond to, accept, reject ortransform. Everyday urbanists don’t just give peoplewhat they ask for or think they need, they helppeople think about what they haven’t alreadyconsidered. And that is the value of this revisededition of Everyday Urbanism; it helps us design theeveryday world in which we live and work.

Karen Lewis

Relearning from Las VegasARON VINEGAR and MICHAEL J. GOLEC, editorsUniversity of Minnesota Press, 2009208 pages, illustrated$25.00 (paper)

I Am a Monument: On Learning fromLas VegasARON VINEGARMIT Press, 2008208 pages, illustrated$29.95 (cloth)

At the end of his introduction to I Am a Monument,Aron Vinegar addresses the issue of interpretation.He calls his book a ‘‘reading,’’ and notes that allreading requires a degree of ‘‘reading in,’’ or into,the object being read. This he likens to a kind of‘‘forcing,’’ as in, perhaps, the forcing of a bulb tobloom, and observes that ‘‘the tone and truth ofthat forcing’’ is the most critical part of the reading.

REVIEWS | BOOKS 158