onsite 27:: rural urbanism
spring 2012
The world is more urban than it is rural, migration to cities offers more employment, more opportunity and more social mobility than the small towns and villages in rural hinterlands. However, such towns and villages still hold much of the character and identity associated with national cultures. It is a paradox, but the past, often pre-urban, still contains much potent imagery.
As well, usually connected with resource extraction, new towns are being designed. Some rely on traditional centred models, others on network systems, still others on new sustainable distribution of energy and resources.
What is going on in our hinterlands?
some of the thoughts that lead to this theme for onsite 27:
There is a linkage between W O Mitchell's Who Has Seen the Wind, 1947 and the shooting of four RCMP officers at Meyerthorpe in 2005. There is a violence in small towns and rural areas that is thought to be both lawless and natural.
In The Music Man ( 1962, lyrics by Meredith Wilson), the small town pool hall was neatly categorised:
Well, ya got trouble, my friend.
Right here, I say trouble right here in River City...
with a capital 'T' and that rhymes with 'P' and that stands for 'pool'
David Murray, who works in Edmonton, restored a pool hall in Vilna, Alberta. Unprepossessing, family lived in the back, but it was a Pool Hall, and yes, that meant trouble. Now it is a heritage site.
The Legion. Often, the Legion was the only hall in town for dances, parties, wedding receptions. and they all had a bar. Growing up in my small coal mining, pulp and paper mill, dock town, the dance on Friday night at the Legion inevitably ended in a fight and the bass drum was kicked in.
Company towns. I would call Calgary a company town: a CPR stop originally and today full of corporate headquarters: no matter, all companies. There is no civic space in a company town because there is no civil society. There is work and there is living accommodation.
The spatial relationship between the old downtown and the strip out on the highway. This seems to be a universal. There is a spatial relationship, but is there an economic and a cultural relationship? Is the strip a small town's contact with the globalised world?
Although these are some of my thoughts, I'm sure you all have other thoughts which will interest us for this issue, 27: rural urbanism.
How rural is rural? Not attached as a suburb or bedroom community to a city.
ideas/proposals for articles only: due 1 January 2012 Tell us roughly how long you see your text and how it will be illustrated. It is not first come, first served, we will collect all proposed submissions, look at them collectively, and let you know if we would like to you proceed about a week later.
Finished texts (due February 15, 2012) should be 500-1000 words or less, sent as an .rtf text document. Images must be 300dpi .jpgs at least 2000px wide. Anything sent not in these formats will sink, sadly, to the bottom of the pile.
Copyright clearance must be obtained, by you, for any images not your own. We do not want any images, ever, taken off the net. They are too low-res, small and fuzzy, there are both acknowledgement and copyright issues.
Take a look at our contributor's contract which will give you our general conditions, and also have a look at our editorial styles and policies.
On Site is not an academic journal, it is an independent magazine read by architects, artists, landscape architects, designers, geographers, students, historians and other interested people. It covers culture, infrastructure, landscape and design. We aim for sophisticated ideas in accessible language. We like construction issues and theory. We like engineering and art. We like drawings and photographs. We like enthusiasm and energy.
There is a call for submissions for an associated photo [but not necessarily photographs]-documentary project on rural urbanism, Rural Urbanism, the exhibition:
rural urbanism, the exhibition
Is rural urbanism conceived of, enacted and understood in a profoundly different way from metropolitan urbanism? or is it just a smaller version.
Considering that architecture and urbanism are discussed almost always in visual terms, and that rural settlements have often been characterised through literature, we wish to outline the terms of reference, the vocabulary and the syntax of a rural urbanism. The form the terms of reference take will be visual: photographic and drawn – a visual, non-fiction essay. These photo-essays will provide the working manifesto and template for an exhibition examples of rural urbanism that will parallel On Site 27: rural urbanism, Spring 2012.
We will not be looking at Calgary or Regina, but rather towns the size of Prince Albert, Fort MacMurray, Timmins, Dauphin, Ladysmith, Nelson, Sydney, Whitehorse. Each small town has a history – the first map, the master plan and the reality. The built reality is what will be noted, and then mapped on the original ambitions for each settlement.
If one looks at a small town through a metropolitan lens, it is inevitably found to be crude, or under-developed, or misleadingly nostalgic. The metropolitan gaze tries to recognise its own reality in small towns which developed with a completely different set of ambitions. We want to develop a rural lens, through which we can view rural settlements.
5-10 black and white photographs that describe the particular urban condition of a small town with which you are familiar. How small is small? Near, or under 50,000. How rural is rural? Not attached as a suburb or bedroom community to a city.
500 words of text, either as extended captions to the images, or as a separate statement in which you define what might be particular about rural urbanism.
deadline: 1 January 2012
