Reasonable Urbanism: Beauty and the Mountains of the City

Today the reasonable urbanism series continues with a trip to the urban mountains. Well, mountains of a sort…

For a city, the mountain landscape here is spectacular.

Walking out of the metro station and down into the valley, I pass through a deep forest. Peeking through the foliage here and there are hints of the lower mountains. Thirty seconds later, there is a clearing where one can armire the full rise of the mountains, low hills in the foreground, transitioning to multiple rows of taller peaks. A few of these higher peaks are forested, but most show their stone or clay faces, nooks, protrusions, and enclaves. Flags wave from many of these spots, laundry drying in the breeze.

Dusk arrives with a twinkle of lights. Then suddenly, a burst of all the colors you might think, reflecting brilliantly off the high cliffs, glowing softly from inside the lower hills. I dwell a bit here, watching. As the sunlight fades, the light source shifts slowly, now coming mostly from lanterns, from shop windows, from street lights, and from living rooms above bustling taverns.

The ‘mountains’ we speak of here are of course, the human-built variety, and the ‘valley’ we are in is none other than a small urban park, surrounded by rows of apartments, of narrow homes, shops, and offices. The timber, glazed tile, and stone that make up the structure of these buildings come mostly from the mountains in this region. But the mountain-ness of this urban valley consists of more than just the materials.

As bread crumbs fly from an old man’s hands, pigeons fall over one another on the ground, and above a hawk circles on a thermal. Light and shadow shift, pulling a small breeze with them down a canyon of buildings. In this moment the landscape — urban as it is — feels strangely mountain-like.

What is even more strange to me, is that the more small urban parks and plazas I visit in Japan — perhaps counting in the thousands by now — the more I understand that this feeling is no mistake. The area around nearly every neighborhood park follows similar themes, and for the most part, it works. Everything from how buildings progress from the center point outward, to how light falls on and around those buildings throughout the day and the seasons, all of it has some importance. In many ways these arrangements purposefully echo what we humans see and feel in natural landscapes.

How might a structure harmoniously connect with what surrounds it? How might a city remind us, of the truths written in the pre-city landscapes? These questions deserve some contemplation.

You could picture a mountain range for instance, with the same shape as the skyline, or a wild grove of trees with the same arrangement as the trees in the corner of the park. Linearity is broken down by thoughtful placement.

There are subtle and utilitarian answers, too. The arrangement of living room windows ensures that many parents have a view of trees, but also of their kids playing in the park in the afternoon. The position of a second floor restaurant windows ensures the most glorious sunset light filtering through the canopy and onto the table for those with early dinner reservations. Lanterns festooned outside the standing bars and eateries offer a soft warm glow to the ground and underside of the trees, lending some inherent kind of comfort to everything. All of it helps makes the area around this tiny park a place that people want to be.

In our own way, we can all sense elements of beauty in these kinds of urban places. When we consider what makes a neighborhood feel beautiful, alive, enchanting to us, we take a step towards realizing what a city can be. When we take this even further — holding the wider landscape and its inhabitants in our minds as we plan out every piece — this is when a realization of what a city could be transforms, into a deeply beautiful reality. We will wade deeper into that latter idea another time.

For now, getting up from my perch in this small park, I feel that how this place exists thanks to actions informed by long and deep thought, by so many people, of what beauty means to this specific culture and place. This all will of course vary depending on each one’s views, each one’s environment, each one’s contemplation of beauty.

The root, is to start that contemplation in the first place.

A reasonable neighborhood puts in the time and effort, to understand what beauty and aliveness mean to the environment and living beings of a place, and formulates this understanding so that it can become the reference for how they design and build henceforth.

What does beauty and aliveness mean where you live? Please share your thoughts below, or send a note to me at thepossiblecity@substack.com

Also, welcome to all the new subscribers! A reminder that each of these illustrated writings takes upwards of 20 hours to produce. That means, at the current rate of paid subscriptions, I am making a small fraction of the minimum wage. Of course, I do this because I love and believe in it. So, if you love and believe in it too, come and join the ranks of the paid subscribers and let’s try to make this something that can fesably continue.

Want to see more like this? I might recommend this one from 2022, about a real tree in Osaka that “negotiated” with a train company, pushing them to build their station around the tree, instead of cutting it down.

SHORT #13: A Tree Who Negotiates