“If children are not able to explore the whole of the adult world round about them, they cannot become adults. But modern cities are so dangerous that children cannot be allowed to explore them freely.”
A Pattern
Language is a book which seems to be following me around, which every time I meet it offers new insights. According to the authors, it lays the “basis for an entirely new approach to architecture, building
and planning” – stemming from a belief that the built environment springs up
naturally from the physical and spiritual needs of the people inhabiting it, if
guided by certain foundational principles. And that these principles or
patterns, overlaid and interlocking, create a kind of poetry within the places
we live.
The book consists of a series of short chapters on everything
from practical matters – such as how far apart to space towns of 1000 people
(“The Distribution of Towns”) – to the metaphysical – such as how to
accommodate the complete lifecycle of a person within a single village (“Life
Cycle”), or how to situate sacred space (“Holy Ground”). Then there are my
favorites, “Dancing in the Street” and “Sleeping in Public”. And that’s just
the first half of the book, covering topics greater in scale than a single
building. There’s much, much more on how to construct patterns within a
building itself.
For today, though, I will share from the chapter “Children
in the City” because it speaks so well – I think – to the tendency
amongst those who seek to live sustainably (and especially to raise kids in a
healthy environment) to envision this life in the countryside. For those who cannot or
prefer not to make this move, is there a way to incorporate this ethic into
the city-dwelling life?
“The need for children to have access to the world of adults
is so obvious that it goes without saying. The adults transmit their ethos and
their way of life to children through their actions, not through statements.
Children learn by doing and by copying. If the child’s education is limited to
school and home, and all the vast undertakings of a modern city are mysterious
and inaccessible, it is impossible for the child to find out what it really
means to be an adult and impossible, certainly, for him to copy it by doing.
“This separation between the child’s world and the adult
world is unknown […] in traditional societies. In simple villages, children
spend their days side by side with farmers in the fields, side by side with
people who are building houses, side by side, in fact, with all the daily
actions of the men and women round about them:
making pottery, counting money, curing the sick, praying to God,
grinding corn, arguing about the future of the village.
“But in the city, life is so enormous and so dangerous, that
children can’t be left alone to roam [….]. The problem seems nearly insoluble. But we believe it can
be at least partly solved by enlarging those parts of cities where small children
can be left to roam, alone, and by trying to make sure that these protected
children’s belts are so widespread and so far-reaching that they touch the full
variety of adult activities and ways of life.
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| Bridge trail in Yorktown, NY: Photo courtesy of Wee Westchester |
“And most important, the great beauty of this path is that
it passes along and even through those functions and parts of a town which are
normally out of reach: the place where
newspapers are printed, the place where milk arrives from the countryside and
is bottled, the pier, the garage where people make doors and windows, the alley
behind restaurant row, the cemetery.”
– A Pattern Language. Christopher
Alexander, Sara Ishikawa, Murray Silverstein et al. Oxford University Press:
New York, NY, 1977, p. 294-295.
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| Indianapolis Cultural Trail: Photo courtesy of Visit Indy. |
