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作者

Frederick E. Lutt

来源

JOURNAL OF URBAN AFFAIRS,Vol.42,Issue4,P.696-698

语言

英文

关键字

作者单位

University of Cincinnati

摘要

Jason Reblando is a fine arts photographer living in Chicago. When he moved to Chicago in 2002, he became intrigued with several public housing projects. He was curious about the history of the housing projects, which led him to learn about the New Deal, the architects involved, and the Garden City idea that had informed housing layout and design. While researching the Garden City idea, he discovered the Greenbelt Towns. From 2009 to 2011, he traveled several times to each of the three Greenbelt Towns (Greenbelt, Maryland; Greendale, Wisconsin; Greenhills, Ohio) to document the current condition of the town’s architecture, and the people that live there. The result of those travels was a photography exhibit of 79 images, and this book documents the exhibit. My interest in the Greenbelt Towns goes back several decades. As an undergraduate student in landscape architecture in the late 1970’s, we studied the new towns. During the years of 1995 to 2001, I lived in Greenhills, and the interest I developed in the origin of the design of the town led me to write my master’s thesis in city planning at the University of Cincinnati on the design theories of the Greenbelt Towns. I’ve taken many photographs of Greenhills myself, as well as a few of Greendale, so I was very interested in analyzing Reblando’s images and comparing them with how I perceive the towns. The forward is written by Natasha Egan, (Museum of Contemporary Photography, Columbia College, Chicago) who organized the exhibit, who states “Reblando’s photographs explore the intersections of the towns’ complex histories and politics as well as the varied sense of place they evoke today” and notes that Reblando is “continually connecting the natural world and the built environment” (p. 7). Reblando also explores how the idea of utopia influenced the design of the towns. Half of the images are of Greenbelt with the balance of the photographs divided almost evenly between Greendale, and Greenhills. Egan notes the images are made in a “straightforward documentary approach with formal rigor” (p. 7). Over half of the images are of parks and building exteriors. These exterior images generally follow a rather strict pattern: a green lawn in the foreground, building exterior in the middle ground, with trees and sky in the background. The resulting images do indeed connect the natural and the built. Some of the images are surprisingly beautiful: these three examples from Greenbelt are especially good. “Converging Paths” (p. 98) shows the mature trees surrounding a neighborhood playground, with very evocative shadows caste on fallen autumn leaves. Another image “Winter Houses” (p. 87), depicts a cluster of row houses, with lawns and roofs covered with a thin layer of snow, the pale winter sky with a hint of yellow and pink, and the black silhouettes of numerous mature trees connecting the earth to the sky. The image “Underpass” (p. 37) depicts the pedestrian tunnel in the summer, with verdant lawn and trees. Some of the images show Reblando’s sly sense of humor. One shows a woman from Greenbelt wearing a t-shirt that reads “Hold on, I need more details” (p. 28). Another shows a sign in Greendale that reads “Dental Care: Drs. McCarl, McCarl, McCarl & McCarl”. The image “Water Tower and Shrubs” (p. 159) also taken in Greendale, shows a row of shrubs planted to screen a water tower, with little effect. Some of Reblando’s portraits are quite evocative. The single interior portrait, “Woman in Study” (p. 44) taken in Greenbelt, depicts the subject seated with one arm confidently resting on a desk, her face lit from the window to the right, with white sheer curtains muting the natural sun light. The room is filled with interesting details: bookshelves on the left wall, and an intricate quilt hanging on the rear wall. One of the many exterior portraits, “Boys on Bikes” (p. 142) taken in Greenhills, depicts two early teens seated on their bikes, eyeing the photographer, with a lush green lawn as the background. Reblando has been rightly criticized by the residents of the Greenbelt Towns about the lack of people in some of the images: the Greenbelt public swimming pool in the late evening, after the crowds have gone (p. 21), the image “City Hall” (p. 47) also Greenbelt, with seven empty chairs, and two photographs taken in Greenhills, one titled “Basketball Court” (p. 71) with a lone player, and the other titled “Winton Woods” (p. 19) with a lone fisherman at the edge of the lake. As someone who has lived in Greenhills, my mental picture of the swimming pool is a pool filled with children playing and adults watching nearby, the city hall chairs are occupied by council members, a group of teens are playing on the basketball court, and Winton Woods has numerous walkers and several fishermen. Reblando’s ideas about utopia and the founding of the Greenbelt Towns are thought provoking. Rexford Tugwell was the director of the Resettlement Administration, the federal agency created during the New Deal to address rural poverty which created the Greenbelt Towns. Although the new towns were created to deal with rural poverty, today, the three new towns are part of metropolitan areas: Washington, DC; Milwaukee, Wisconsin; and Cincinnati, Ohio, respectively. Reblando considers Tugwell’s vision of the new towns to have been utopian, which raises the question: To what extent were the built towns a success with regards to the original utopian vision? From my perspective as a planner, the towns are a mixture of successes and failures. Because of commonalities in design it is possible to generalize about the three. One notable success is the innovative site planning of the houses and the close proximity of each unit to a park or green belt. Another success is the lasting legacy of cooperative enterprises, which still flourish in each of the three towns. Finally, the imageability of the center of each town is successful because of the close proximity of the business district to the community building and the swimming pool, and town commons along with the dynamic relationships that clustering fosters. While the built form of the Greenbelt Towns was largely successful, the program itself was a failure since no further towns were built. The Greenbelt Towns were originally intended to have been transferred from the federal government to a local public agency, and the units were to be rented, not sold. In the 1950’s all three towns were sold to the residents and the federal government never again attempted such an ambitious garden city development. The nearest federal program idea was public housing, which focused largely on urban areas, lacked significant green spaces, and was never self governing like the Greenbelt Towns. In Reblando’s words, the photographs “are an opportunity to engage with a unique expression of the New Deal as we continue to grapple with the complexities of housing, nature, and government in contemporary American life” (p. 7). I found the images to be a rather loving portrayal of the Greenbelt Towns and the people that now live there. A few photographs hint at a faded utopia, but mostly they show mature neighborhoods with a diversity of people. What stands out most to me from looking at the photographs is the strong relationship of the housing to the natural environment. If you are interested in the Greenbelt Towns of the New Deal, I recommend the book as a way of seeing the towns in a new light, and to ponder the meaning of utopia.