Columbus
It has been a warm, sunny day in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where strangers are kind and beauty is overflowing.
Columbus, Indiana, appears to have been built by a civilisation that is different, superior. At times, the city’s inhabitants act out noble savages, groping for ways to put to use the setting whose purpose they cannot quite fathom. “That water jet in the middle of a lake, in the Mill Race Park, what’s its point? It is unclear, but let’s keep it running, just in case. And that overhanging platform, was it supposed to be a bridge to somewhere? A landing pad? Whatever. Now, the observation tower, that surely marks an entrance to an underground network of tunnels. The entrance does not seem to be operational, though, so let us just climb it up and down for now and pretend that that’s the point. And what’s the point of the point, anyway? When in doubt, wear shorts. Fish.”
Maybe it is for the best that the purported savages are not too smart — or at least are not liable to thinking of themselves as being too smart; otherwise they would have successfully embarked on the project of wiping out the memory of the old civilisation only to find themselves unable to replace it with anything at all workable. The memory of the old civilisation embodied in the structures that this civilisation has left behind can thus some day inspire a superior successor civilisation. In the meantime, the old civilisation is fortunate to have the guardians whom it has itself nourished for itself.
Without stooping to yard-sign warfare, Columbus makes the point of welcoming everyone. The First Christian Church and the Irvin Union Bank were expressly built to welcome members of all social classes. The City Hall and The Republic Building are designed to assure that they have nothing to hide. The passer-by has an unobstructed view of what is inside these buildings. The County Jail instructs the citizen that while the jailed may be temporarily banished, they remain citizens deserving of respect, beauty (courtesy of the said designer jail), and a prime downtown location.
Even though the city is overrun by noble savages, this is exactly what this city was designed to be. It does not judge.
Designer cities have not fared well. This failure may be the bug that is inherent in the very idea of a centrally designed city. Alternatively, this failure may be due to the fact that a city calls for re-design only when it is already failing. The re-design ends up not helping, but nor would anything else help. Or maybe the failure of central design is due to the fact that the committees in charge of design typically possess no special expertise apart from the ability to secure, through cunning and perseverance, the positions that would put them in change of design. Columbus is different in that its designers in chief were rich denizens, who, by the definition of being rich, possessed the skill of being capable of detecting what it was that people wanted and then delivering it to them.
The city of Columbus is the Miller House conceived by the Inn at Irwin Gardens. Columbus is a daring project that, as any good entrepreneurial project, is more likely to fail than to succeed, but if it does succeed, it will represent a major advance. (If it is clear to you that your project is more likely to succeed than to fail, then it is not your project. Someone else must have already thought about it. The project has either already succeeded or has been determined to be a failure, and you just have not heard about it yet.) The Inn at Irwin Gardens is immaculate, for it represents the best of what humanity has perfected over centuries. The Miller House is a magnificent failure. The Inn is alive; the Miller House has been consumed by a museum. The Inn delights; the Miller House contains a lesson. But sometimes, a lesson is more valuable than just another source of delight.
The lesson that the Miller House imparts is that a life manufactured by experts may be less satisfying than a life that has evolved organically. One can retort — and I think Columbus does retort — that life is short: one can get farther by careful design than by betting on gradual evolution.
Columbus overwhelms with its empty space, even at its busiest. This emptiness can depress. It can also inspire. It can both depress and inspire. Sitting on the steps of the Cleo Rogers Memorial Library, looking at the desolate Plaza, one may be overcome by the animalistic instinct to flee. Where is everyone? Where am I? Who am I? Is this a university campus with no university and no students? Should I hurry to wherever everyone has deserted this place for? The same emptiness can also eventually bring the peace that, in turn, can help one realise that the negative spaces of the city’s buildings are there to protect and nourish you, not to suck you in, and that prophetic are the words pasted onto a window of the Lincoln School: “the world needs who you were created to be.”
Thank you kindly.
