An Expatriate’s Primer on an Urban View

In Gordon Cullen’s epic early-1960s work, The Concise Townscape, he described the visual experience of townscape views through an emphasis on “serial vision,” and on present and emerging views that become revelation while moving from place to place. More than Edmund Bacon, who focused his Design of Cities on similar experiential aspects framed by the built environment, Cullen provided extensive typologies of architecture and street patterns through photographic example, concentrating on the experience of moving from place to place.

For Cullen, passing through the built environment was full of tensions, delight, drama, and contrasts, specifically, the “drama of juxtapositions.” In my book, Seeing the Better City, I also arrived at the same term, juxtapositions, and, since I moved to the United Kingdom early this year, I see juxtapositions as an even more essential element of urban observation.

For many years, my urban exploration has stressed an experiential approach to urban juxtapositions, overlaps, intersections, and all the other descriptors applicable to urban life. I like to say that it’s a gut-level, observational process, which every one of us has the means to carry out.

I have thought a lot about such juxtapositions, and why they are points of context and focus — catalysts for today’s urban dialogues. In the United…