THE CIVIC ART: CLEVELAND: December 2012

Thursday, December 27, 2012

THE QUESTIONABLE PLANNING REVIEW PROCESS IN CLEVELAND

The following little item was published in the Cleveland Plain Dealer Business Briefs on Christmas Day:

UPTOWN REVIEW DELAYED:

“A review of plans for a new building at the Uptown project in University Circle has been delayed until Jan. 4. The Cleveland City Planning Commission did not see the plans Friday after City Councilman Kevin Conwell said he was not told about the project and needs time to discuss it with neighbors.”

An article about the project was published on the front page of the Plain Dealer Business section on December 19:

http://www.cleveland.com/business/index.ssf/2012/12/uptown_project_in_university_c.html

So a high profile story on the development was published in the newspaper on December 19, but the local councilman “was not told about the project,” before it was to go under review by the Planning Commission on December 21?

It would seem that it would be beneficial to the community at large if the local council representative had the opportunity to review and have some input into a project of this magnitude, significance, and impact PRIOR to it coming before the Planning Commission for final approval.

How backwards the approach to development is in this city!

QUOTABLE

“To vitalize building materials, to animate them with a thought...to charge them with a social significance and value...to impart to them the best that is in the people–such is the real function of the architect.”

—Louis Henri Sullivan

“One of the primary obligations of any work of architecture is to create a sense of place, to respect and enhance a building’s physical and cultural context.”

“Another responsibility is to work within a tradition in a scholarly manner, to be succored but not smothered by the values of architectural culture.”

—Robert A. M. Stern

“The best way to make real architecture is by letting a building evolve out of a place and culture.”

—Samuel Mockbee of Rural Studio

“There is not an important city anywhere in America that does not have a unique character, a particular spirit, and a fascinating history.”

—Kenneth T. Jackson

“The past possesses an accumulation of wisdom which we ignore at our peril.”

—Philip Langdon, fromA Better Place To Live

“The city is the place of availabilities. It is the place where a small boy, as he walks through it, may see something that will tell him what he wants to do his whole life.”

“In the city, the street must be supreme. It is the first institution of the city. The street is a room by agreement, a community room, the walls of which belong to the donors, dedicated to the city for common use. Its ceiling is the sky.”

—Louis Kahn, from Between Silence and Light

“When we build, let us think we build forever.

Let it not be for present delight nor for present use alone. Let it be such work that our descendants will thank us for, and let us think, as we lay stone upon stone, that a time is to come when these stones will be held sacred because our hands have touched them, and that men will say, as they look upon the labor and wrought substance of them, 'See! This our fathers did for us."

—John Ruskin