Regional and Urban Design Committee

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The Regional and Urban Design Committee (RUDC) aims to improve the quality of the regional and urban environment by promoting excellence in design, planning, and public policy in the built environment. This will be achieved through its member and public education, in concert with allied community and professional groups. Join us!

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2023 RUDC Symposium

The RUDC Symposium, held in Washington, DC October 19-20, covered emerging trends, theories, and technologies that are shaping the future of regional and urban design. Watch the engaging highlight and speaker videos >.

  • 1.  The Built Environment and Confederate Monuments

    Posted 08-29-2017 10:31 PM
    How quickly we stray from our role speaking up about Confederate monuments. The confederacy attempted to bring down our Union.They were defeated. Soldiers who lost their lives are appropriately memorialized in towns and cities throughout America. Political leaders and,army generals who championed slavery were speaking against the Constitution, as amended. They were memorialized, two and three decades later for one reason. That was to let post reconstruction black skinned citizens know whowas now in charge: white men. That's why that statuary is frequently placed on tall columns and large plinths, just in case anyone might mis the message. True heroes, black and white, who fought to preserve the union, in the Confederacy and the Union, were not commemorated. Perhaps it is now time to remember them and commemorate them. The insurectionist bronzes belong assembled in settings which tell the stories of our history, as the National Park Service does in Washington DC.

    When we as architects stray from our chosen field of expertise, i.e.,  the built environment,  we only create divisive attitudes toward each other, making it more difficult to practice our craft collaboratively.

    Richard Rosen, Emeritus, Rochester, NY




  • 2.  RE: The Built Environment and Confederate Monuments

    Posted 08-30-2017 05:27 PM
    In my travels of the USA and in Italy, and other sorts, I find that "place" is important.  It is not about acting like ISIS in re-configuring towns, history, or any monuments.  It is, however, important for people to know that in our differences we have "history."  This, in itself, asks us to search, seek and to understand the reasoning.  Prejudice also comes in the form of destroying "history."

    ------------------------------
    Bryan Liebig AIA
    ARCHITECT
    BHL ARCHITECTURE
    Sacramento CA
    ------------------------------



  • 3.  RE: The Built Environment and Confederate Monuments

    Posted 08-31-2017 06:57 PM

    In my opinion you guys are all missing the point. White washing history is counter productive - that's what history museums and didactic sites are for, such as the battlefield at Gettysburg. Public art placed in public space, however, requires consensus in a democracy, to communicate shared values. These statues were intentionally placed in public spaces to communicate a message of white dominance over black - they were intended as an attempt to whitewash the Civil War. After a hundred years we white folks have finally been sensitized to the meaning of these monuments. There is no longer a consensus to keep them and their message in the public square. They need to be moved to the museums, where they can teach us about the evils that can lurk under a seemingly innocuous presence.


    Michael R. Ytterberg, PhD, AIA, LEED AP

    1477843929228_Logo

    MY Architecture

    3431 Midvale Avenue

    Philadelphia, PA 19129

    www.myarchitecture.build


    267-618-3233

    mytterberg@myarchitecture.build








  • 4.  RE: The Built Environment and Confederate Monuments

    Posted 09-01-2017 06:49 PM
    An argument might be made, (and I could make it) that we need to keep present among us the monuments celebrating the lives and actions of the secessionist and treasonous Confederacy as a reminder that it was the Southern good people, the leaders the community, the professionals, the higher social structure, the church goers, the well educated, like you and me; not nazis, not hate groups, not thugs, not the ignorant who espoused, endorsed, supported and practiced the principle that some persons are property to be bought and sold and to be kept in slavery for all their lives.

    We wonder, perhaps for public consumption, how it was in the Germany of the 1930’s, the most advanced culture in Europe, that Hitler and the Nazi’s could rise and bring the Holocaust to our world. Those complicit in Germany were the well educated, the leaders in business and industry, the professionals, the church goers, the good people, like you and me, that looked away and allowed that cruel, unhappy history to unfold.

    The Confederate Monuments are a sobering present reminder to us that as human creatures, we have it in us, you and me, not somebody else, if we allow it, to be swept into a shameful history again. What environment shall we elect to build?

    That’s the argument.

    The great American philosopher, Pogo had it right. We have met the enemy and he is us.

    But for so long as such monuments are a bitter affront to any one of my African American neighbors, whose forbearers lived in condoned and legal slavery, those monuments that celebrate slavery of persons in one group by persons in another group, ought to be removed.




  • 5.  RE: The Built Environment and Confederate Monuments

    Posted 08-30-2017 08:54 PM
    I find it disheartening when anyone presumes to know the intentions of those who lived 100 years or more ago, and to assume all their intention to be ill willed is equally mystifying.  

    The Civil War was about states rights, slavery, and secession from the union.  The people of the colonies during the revolution were as divided about rebellion as the states in the civil war, as was our uncertainty about entering WWII before Pearl Harbor. Lincoln had sons on both sides of the civil war.

    History is...you can't change it..to try and erase it is pure folly, to reinterpret it without direct knowledge is mildly educated guess work at best.

    History should teach us, but if we burn the books who will remember, who will learn?


    ------------------------------
    Alan Cuteri AIA
    ------------------------------



  • 6.  RE: The Built Environment and Confederate Monuments

    Posted 08-31-2017 06:06 PM
    Alan ,

    It is well documented that Southern States succeeded from the union because of slavery.  The idea of states rights was part of a revisionist rewriting of history following the civil war to justify their actions. 


    This is a food summary;

    https://wallbuilders.com/confronting-civil-war-revisionism-south-went-war/

    ------------------------------
    Phil Klinkon, AIA
    ------------------------------



  • 7.  RE: The Built Environment and Confederate Monuments

    Posted 08-30-2017 11:13 PM
    Hello All ---
     
    Several writers in this latest posting (dated 29 Aug. '17 [Tue.]) have mentioned +/- "learning from the built environment", which to me includes monuments and statues.  The good, the bad, and the ugly need to stay around to remind us, or teach us, our history.
     
    As near as I can tell, most native-born Americans' knowledge of their own history is very poor, the younger the worse.  If you want to ask someone an American-history question, find a recently-sworn-in immigrant citizen.  They clearly have a very serious history sequence, and of course, they're highly-motivated.  They know the stuff that "all of us" once knew.
     
    About 4 hosts ago, the Tonight Show was hosted by Jay Leno.  On Monday nights, his 2nd segment was the very-scary "Jay-Walking", asking random people-on-the-street various questions.  They could pick-out celebs from photo arrays, but not world leaders or our previous Presidents.  It was in this segment that I "learned" that the Civil War was when we defeated the French, in 1922!!!
     
    'Nuff said...
    Thanks ---
    Bill
    william j. devlin aia, inc.,
    ARCHITECT
    Springfield, MA