John Boles May 10, 2013

Critical Mass: Simulated Value and Urban Space

Figure 1: Baltimore's Inner Harbor

In 1963, Baltimore Mayor Theodore R. McKeldin announced the governments plan to redevelop the citys downtown area. He described its shoreline as a sorry scene of rotting piers, parking lots, and derelict industrial buildings, which detracted from the revival of downtown (Hayward 286). The plan was to make use of combined city and federal investment, and the developers would strictly acquisition of downtown land and the uses to which that land could be put. Designs during this first period of urban renewal in Baltimore followed the modernist tradition of sacrificing aesthetic in favor of social organization; they subordinated individual buildings to the total composition.

John Boles May 10, 2013 Structures did not fight with one another for attention. In general, the forms of new buildings reflected greater concern for siting, mass, proportion, and scale than for stylistic trends. That way planners could create a pleasing and cohesive environment without needing every building to be a masterpiece (Hayward 286). Examples included the John F. Deaton Medical Nursing Center (1972), each side of the collagelike building designed to respond to the scale and materials of the area it faced, and I.M. Peis monolithic World Trade Center, which utilized a pentagonal shape to provide more office space in less visible mass (Hayward 288). The 1968 riots following the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., prompted a reevaluation of the architectural planning of downtown Baltimore, in particular that of the waterfront space. A small group of influential politicians, professionals, and business leaders got together to see if there was some way to bring the city together; they sought a symbol around which to build the idea of the city as a community, a city which could believe in itself sufficiently to overcome the divisions and the siege mentality with which the common citizenry approached downtown and its public spaces (Harvey 88-9). What resulted was a massive, motivationally conflicted overhaul of the purpose and design of Baltimores harbor. The urban planners touted the social goals of modernism while also claiming to be building an environment sensitive to the eclecticism and diversity valued by the emerging postmodern thought of the era. Neither purpose won out, though, as Inner Harbor became a preeminently postmodern space that simulates the aspirations of modernism and postmodernism while instead promoting the rather complex domestic organization with its dozens of technical slaves to the urban estate

John Boles May 10, 2013 with all the machinery of communication and professional activity that defines late capitalism (Baudrillard 29). Examining the shift from modernist to postmodernist urban planning, Leon Krier noted that the former primarily utilized mono-functional zoning that necessitated complex transportation infrastructure and segmented cultural activity in unnatural ways. He imagined, alternatively, a city in which the totality of urban functions are provided within compatible and pleasant walking distancesa city made up of complete and finite urban communities (Harvey 67). This is the myth that the Baltimore developers hoped to promote in their renewal of Inner Harbor. As this analysis will show, they rather created an illusion of Kriers good city, an isolated space providing for a wealth of functions and needs that all serve the common goal of promoting commercial activity, with little concern for the surrounding community and urban space. After the Second World War, rapid and weakly controlled suburbanization [in the United States] (the answer to every demobilized soldiers dream, as the rhetoric of the time had it) was privately developed but heavily subsidized by government-backed housing finance and direct public investments in highway construction and other infrastructures (Harvey 69). As people, jobs, and capital flowed out of urban centers, those spaces began to disintegrate, provoking a powerful and again governmentsubsidized strategy of urban renewal through massive clearance and reconstruction of older city centers (Harvey 69). This reinvestment had several important effects on the design and function of contemporary urban space. First, it naturally encouraged a postmodern fragmentation of uses, incorporating and renovating old buildings while reimagining the types of people and commercial needs that could be served in the various

John Boles May 10, 2013 districts and locations being redeveloped. Second, it replaced the single core of the traditional city with the multiple nucleii of a Los Angelesized urban environment (Teaford 152). No longer mono-functional in the way that Krier had lamented, these spaces were meant to provide for vibrant and self-sustaining communities marked by organized rather than disorganized complexity, a vitality and energy of social interaction that [depends] crucially upon diversity, intricacy, and the capacity to handle the unexpected in controlled but creative ways (Jacobs, Harvey 73). However, the third consequence in some sense nullified those effects. Postmodern architecture and urban design tends to be shamelessly market-oriented because that is the primary language of communication in our societymarket integration plainly carries with the it the danger of pandering to the rich and the private consumer rather than to the power and to public needs (Harvey 77). Urban planning with the ambition of recapturing public space and drawing people back into the cities would inevitably become a commercial endeavor, the temptations of the material conditions of happiness being the most efficient tool for effecting such a change. Work, leisure, nature, and culture, all previously dispersed, separate, and more or less irreducible activities that produced anxiety and complexity in our real life, and in our anarchic and archaic cities, have finally become mixed, massaged, climate controlled, and domesticated into the simple activity of perpetual shopping (Baudrillard 34). The good city became a good consumer city, its finite communities distinguished by the boundaries of the their commercial functions.

John Boles May 10, 2013 The boundaries of the Inner Harbor, therefore, were a primary focus in designing the space. Low buildings were constructed around the outer edge with the occasional tower, such as the United States Fidelity and Guaranty Life Insurance Company building, to mark the intersection of the central business district and the waterfront. A height limit of about 10 stories was set for buildings along Pratt and Light streetsboth distinguishing the harbor developments from their corporate neighbors and ensuring beautiful views from the skyscrapers further inlandand a planted promenade now separates pedestrians from automobile traffic and the rest of the city (Figure 2). This border helps accent the more sculptural foreground buildings, which generally [contain] public attractions and [help] to define and enliven the waters edge (Hayward 287). Even the parking lots in the area were distanced from the waterfront, promoting the illusion of an enclosed space that can meet all of its occupants needs. Former chief executive of Charles Center-Inner Harbor Management, Inc., Martin Millspaugh remarked, I am convinced that this frame is a primary cause of the feeling of well-being that everyone enjoys along the shoreline (Hayward 287).
Figure 2: Skyscrapers in the business district loom across the street from the Inner Harbor.

John Boles May 10, 2013 As Harvey notes, such environmental isolation is symptomatic of free-market populism, which puts the middle classes into the enclosed and protected spaces of shopping malls and atria, butdoes nothing for the poor except to eject them into a new and quite nightmarish postmodern landscape of homelessness (77). Indeed, the shopping mall as an architectural concept informs the entire design of Inner Harbor, not just its actual mall spaces. Baudrillard comments on the significance of providing a variety of purchasing options within a commercial space: The display no longer exhibits an overabundance of wealth but a range of select and complementary objects which are offered for the choosing. But this arrangement also invokes a psychological chain reaction in the consumer who peruses it, inventories it, and grasps it as a total category. Few objects today are offered alone, without a context of objects to speak for them. And the relation of the consumer to the object has consequently changed: the object is no longer referred to in relation to a specific utility, but as a collection of objects in their total meaningWe can observe that objects are never offered for consumption in an absolute disarray. In certain cases they can mimic disorder to better seduce, but they are always arranged to trace out directive paths. The arrangement directs the purchasing impulse towards networks of objects in order to seduce it and elicit, in accordance with its own logic, a maximal investment, reaching the limits of economic potential. (31) Inner Harbor, with its malls, aquarium, science museum, convention center, waterfront activities, ice-skating rink, visitors center, and more, provides just such a network of commercial offerings. The value of the space comes from the presentation of its diversity as a unified environmental whole, a place to get lost in for an entire day, or more. Buildings that failed to promote that unity have been renovated and restyled to better suit the needs of the Inner Harbor. The Maryland Science Center, built by Edward Durrell Stone, originally resembled a pavilion that looked inward rather than outward and supplied exotic interior spaces (Hayward 288). It was mistaken for a classified research center which offered no welcoming face toward the crowds of people

John Boles May 10, 2013 thronging the waters edge (Millspaugh, Science Center). The building would have been a celebrated postmodern creation were it not for the goal of establishing the same sort of inward facing exotic interior effect for the Inner Harbor as a whole. Therefore, administratorsworked to correct its flaws. In 1988, a new entrance lobby and IMAX theater improved the buildings demeanor and usefulness by reorienting it to the harbor (Figure 3) (Hayward 288). The modernist concept of a broader social purposemaking the space open and inviting to the publicmerged with postmodern urban design technique, while both served the commercial interests of the Inner Harbor as an entertainment destination. The IMAX theater would also become symbolic of the artificial creation of ambiance
Figure 3: The Maryland Science Center now offers a more inviting facade toward the promenade.

so central to the Inner Harbors

success (as I will discuss below): The IMAXis the large-screen special-effects movie house where spectators are made to actually experience the sensation of flying, or space travel, or undersea movement (Millspaugh, Science Center). Best of all, from the developers perspective, the IMAX theater filled a new niche and increased revenues enough to help pay for its own construction as well as future expansions. Despite the initial aim to provide a wide array of specialty shops, including merchants featuring fresh produce and other foods found in the citys municipal markets, with restaurants as larger attractions, the Inner Harbor shopping pavilions (known as

John Boles May 10, 2013 Harborplace) have become lackluster imitations of standardized suburban chain-store shopping, filled almost exclusively with international chains (Harvey 71). Harvey identifies the evolving Baltimore City Fair as the harbinger of this decline in diversity and local, eclectic emphasis, as over the years the fair became inexorably less neighbourly and more commercialthe fair became the lead item in drawing larger and larger crowds to the downtown area on a regular basis, to see all manner of staged spectacles. It was a short step from that to an institutionalized commercialization in the form of the various entertainment and shopping centers that now populate the Inner Harbor (Harvey 89-90). Media coverage of the opening of Harborplace was optimistic about the motivation for building the shopping centers and the effects they would have on the Inner Harbor space: When Harborplace opens tomorrow, it seems sure to be celebrated with real feeling and enthusiasm that surpasses any other event in the rebirth of the Inner Harbor. Its appeal reaches deep into the spiritual sources of Baltimoreana, but what may be just as important in the long run: it is expected to lift the whole amalgam of other attractions around the shoreline to form a critical mass, where the total appeal is greater than the sum of the parts (Millspaugh, Critical Mass A11). Even on the brink of the opening of the most commercial construction yet seen in the harbor, Millspaugh spoke against people who still consider Harborplace to be a crasscreation, or destructive of the peaceful contemplation of the water (Critical Mass A11). His and the citys optimism were not born from blissful ignorance, but from a unique correlating feature of initiatives undertaken for the good of the public and for private benefit: the mobilization of the masses. Millspaugh continued, We all hope such doubts will be dispelled after tomorrow,

John Boles May 10, 2013 but in any case it cannot be denied that the largest missing ingredient in the Inner Harbor has been the capacity for large numbers of people to eat and drink, or go shopping for fun (Critical Mass A11). Inner Harbor, both as a public service and a commercial endeavor, was and is dependent upon the generation of sufficient interest to justify its plethora of entertainment offerings and to fund its business occupants, neither being able to sustain itself without the conservation of the other. To maintain the illusion of the Inner Harbor as sensitive to vernacular traditions, local histories, particular, wants, needs, and fancies, historical architecture and artifacts are preserved and highlighted throughout, whether in the form of a renovated warehouse building, the retired Constellation warship docked along the shore, an inconspicuous sign offering visitors some historical background on the space and its development, or the recent addition of a mangled piece of metal from the New York City World Trade Center brought down on September 11, 2001 (Figure 4). The 35foot-wide promenade that encircles the water was constructed of brick to reflect the historic building material of the city itself (Millspaugh, Critical Mass A12). Many old buildings were repurposed, including the decrepit Pratt
Figure 4: The NYC World Trade Center memorial outside the Baltimore World Trade Center

John Boles May 10, 2013 Street Power Plant, which was transformed into a Barnes and Noble, Hard Rock Caf, and other restaurants and shops, exemplifying postmodern appropriation of historical ambiance. As Baudrillard puts it, Even the smallest ski resort is organized on the universalist model of the drugstore, one where all activities are summarized, systematically combined, and centered around the fundamental concept of ambiance (Baudrillard 33). The brick walls and towers within the Barnes and Noble are incorporated into and mimicked by the design of the entryway, escalators, checkout counters, and shelving units, obliterating the distinctions between timeworn architecture and contemporary commercial renovation (Figure 5). Likewise, Scarlett Place of Baltimore, a condominium development, brings together historical preservation (the nineteenth-century Scarllet Seed Warehouse is incorporated into the far lefthand corner) and the postmodernist urge for quotation, in this case from a Mediterranean hilltop village (Harvey 95).
Figure 5: Barnes & Noble seamlessly blends the architecture of the former Pratt Street Power Plant power plant with contemporary commercial design.

One of the harbors biggest historical tourist

attractions was discovered by accident. When the Tall Ships, large sailboats used in celebrations of the nations heritage and built and rigged in emulation of those used around 1776, came to the Public Wharf in Baltimore in 1976, the city and its residents

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John Boles May 10, 2013 were electrified by their towering sails and rigging; hundreds of thousands of spectators came to the Inner Harbor to visit and go on board the Tall Shipsincluding many suburbanites who had been in the habit of bragging that they hadnt been downtown for years (Millspaugh, Critical Mass A13). This unprecedented popularity was crucial in convincing the Rouse Company (designers of Bostons Faneuil Hall Market Place) to join the Inner Harbor development team, the ships historical value instantly converting into a signal of the economic potential of the harbor space. As Millspaugh put it, from that moment forward the future of the Inner Harbor as a regional complex of attractions was assured (Critical Mass A13). Nowhere in the harbor is the construction of ambiance more apparent than at the National Aquarium. Considered now to be the sculptural centerpiece of the Inner Harbor, and the most successful aquarium in the United States, the National Aquarium is notable for its striking haphazard and angled forms, which were not constrained by stylistic limitations such as those the architects of the New England Aquarium faced in accommodating Bostons smaller and older waterfront (Hayward 293). It features an indoor simulation of a journey around the world, from the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean to the top of an Amazon rain
Figure 6: The National Aquarium features a complete indoor rain forest ecosystem, visible here through the shining glass exterior.

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John Boles May 10, 2013 forest (Hayward 293). Upon entering, visitors are met with an enormous rock face juxtaposed with the shimmering glass surfaces of the aquariums outer walls, a remarkable natural element inserted into the artificial space (Figure 6). Following a oneway circulation sequence, visitors move through dark spaces accented by the neon glow of backlit tanks and signs before eventually boarding an escalator to reach the rain forest area. The artificiality of the spaces ambiance is powerfully and literally felt as the humidity slowly builds on the ride up to the top. Architect Peter Chermayeff claimed that the aquariums design and experience are symbolic of the Inner Harbor project as a whole: Its not just a token exhibit stuck in the cornerIt makes the point that all life is dependent on water, and in fact, unified by water (Hayward 293). The aquariums ambiance is not limited to the building itself, and in recent years it has been at the forefront of a gradual spilling out of consumer environments onto the walkways and plazas of the Inner Harbor. The entire area surrounding the aquarium is filled with plants from all around the world, and hidden speakers loop the ambient music that accompanies the indoor aquatic exhibits. Outdoor space, ostensibly the last vestige of public domain, is subsumed by the styles and purposes of the institutions surrounding it. An enormous dragon sculpture marks the recently built Ripleys Believe-It-Or-Not museum, arching outward from the shopping center to overshadow the promenade (Figure 7). Each year, more and more outdoor stores and restaurants such as the new Ritas Italian Ice move commercial functions out beyond the boundaries of the shopping centers. Though the Inner Harbor has hardly been viewed as anything but a consumer space, these changes seem to make official its conception as one gigantic indoor and outdoor mall.

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John Boles May 10, 2013 Complicating these developments in the harbor is a tension between the need to cater to contemporary fashions and the desire to build lasting monuments that can serve a function beyond their immediate implementation.
Figure 7: The dragon marking the entrance to Ripley's Believe-It-OrNot at Harbor Places spills out over the promenade.

Aldo Rossi illuminates the

conflict between ephemerality and permanence in urban spaces: Destruction and demolition, expropriation and rapid changes in use as a result of speculation and obsolescence, are the most recognizable signs of urban dynamics. But beyond all else, the images suggest the interrupted destiny of the individual, of his often sad and difficult participation in the destiny of the collective. This vision in its entirety seems to be reflected with a quality of permanence in urban monuments. Monuments, signs of the collective will as expressed through the principles of architecture, offer themselves as primary elements, fixed points in the urban dynamic (Harvey 83) Many structures in the Inner Harbor have maintained the permanence of urban monuments in spite of their remarkably dated designs, most notably the two Harborplace buildings occupying the north and west shores. They are essential fixtures of the central artery along which all foot traffic in the harbor must travel, and yet they are often filled with closed and unoccupied stores, and their architectural structure mirrors the isolated shopping environment of their suburban counterparts, blocking out natural light and betraying the aesthetic theme of the Inner Harbor space. Andy Warhol once commented, My ideal city would be completely new. No antiques. All the buildings

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John Boles May 10, 2013 would be new. Old buildings are unnatural spaces. Buildings should be built to last for a short time. And if theyre older than ten years, I say get rid of them. Id build new buildings every fourteen years (157). Harbor Place is stuck between the function of Andy Warhols ideal city, constantly renewing to meet consumer needs (hence the abandoning of local merchants in favor of popular chains) and the permanence of Rossis signs of the collective, attempting to establish a sort of material historyeven the efficient and quasi-temporary mall structures take on historical significance in the context of an artificially enclosed environment like the Inner Harbor. Over the years, the corporate presence around the perimeter has encroached on the harbor area. Several buildings now break the original height limits; the shining ring of modern skyscrapers appears to loom over the waterfront. The recently renovated Visitor Center stands sentry at the end of Conway Street, seeking to preserve the harbors connections to the Convention Center and Camden Yards, which are gradually being swallowed up by the surrounding business developments (Figure 8). As the harbors stylized consumer space evolves, it grows more
Figure 8: The Baltimore Visitor Center at Inner Harbor

appealing to the businesses surrounding it that would lay claim to its ambiance and cultural capital. The distinctions between professional and consumer roles are diminished: We have reached the point where consumption has grasped the whole of

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John Boles May 10, 2013 life; where all activities are sequenced in the same combinatorial mode; where the schedule of gratification is outlined in advance, one hour at a time; and where the environment is complete, completely climatized, furnished, and culturalized (Baudrillard 33). The Inner Harbor seems destined eventually to function as both a professional and commercial hub, equal parts office and store space, with the boundaries between the two becoming harder and harder to determine for the visiting tourist and native worker alike. This is the final, hidden result of the great illusion created by the Inner Harbors developers. They espoused an innovative blend of the modern and the postmodern in architecture and function, their designs both serving the larger social goal of affirming the waterfront as a common good of the peoplea concern to explore pure form and space with a mind to public needsand allowing for diverse uses, a symbolic richness of traditional urban forms based on the propinquity and dialogue of the greatest possible variety and hence on the expression of true variety as evidenced by the meaningful and truthful articulation of public spaces, urban fabric, and skyline (Harvey 97, 67-8). Instead, this conception of the planning of Inner Harbor served as a postmodern metacreation, a third-order simulation of both modern social purpose and postmodern eclecticism (Baudrillard 172). If, as Roland Barthes opined, the city is a discourse and this discourse is truly a language, then Baltimores Inner Harbor is a masterful marketing campaign, touting social benefits while subliminally promoting a reliable flow of commercial activity (Harvey 67). The image of the Inner Harbor as a unifying public reclamation project is, in Baudrillards words, neither true nor false: it is a deterrence machine set up in order to

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John Boles May 10, 2013 rejuvenate in reverse the fiction of the real (172). The harbor is in fact the quintessential and hyperreal embodiment of the late capitalist urban space: serving a variety of consumer-oriented needs in an aesthetically pleasing environment that encourages visitors to forget their external concerns and their awareness of the spaces constructed and artificial nature. At the same time, to simulate is not simply to feign; in the process of simulating a larger social goal, the Inner Harbor has achieved some of the true symptoms of urban renewal for the public good (Baudrillard 167). However, that public good is not the imagined reality of diverse local communities and institutions, but the hyperreality of commercial experience, with a whole range of gadgets [that] magnetizes the crowd into direct flows (Baudrillard 171). It is unsurprising, then, to hear that for nearly 30 years the Inner Harbor has consistently drawn more visitors than what many would consider the considerably more artificial fantasy world of Disneyland, about which Baudrillard is writing. That level of attraction is difficult to sustain, and so the Waterfront Partnership of Baltimore remains intent on finding new ways to reinvent and monetize the space. President Laurie Schwartz noted, The harbor has several terrific anchors, especially in the Science Center and the Aquarium. In addition, it needs new free or low-cost activities and attractions for people. It needs to have a plan where, every two to three years, were adding new features, new amenities, new reasons for people to visit the harbor (Serpick). Thus the cycle continues: no doubt new stores, events, and activities will appear, but their differences will be more in appearance and illusion than in motivation and structure. To maintain interest both from tourists and from the growing population of families in downtown Baltimore, the Inner Harbor must adapt its goods and

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John Boles May 10, 2013 images, but its purpose will remain the same. Baltimores organization of spectacular urban spaces [as] a means to attract capital and people must be undertaken with as much attention given to the simulated projection of public value as to the actual construction of centers of entertainment and consumption (Harvey 92).

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John Boles May 10, 2013 CODA

Situated just outside the heavily crowded shopping and entertainment areas of the Inner Harbor is Pierces Park, opened in 2012. Created in memory of businessman Pierce John Flanigan, III, the park consists of a small green space populated by various playful works of art that prompt aural interaction: xylophones with mallets, an intonated musical fence, a sound cone sculpture, and two massive metallic drum faces. The park is an outlier amidst the commercial hubbub of its neighboring environment, a peaceful, reflective space made almost entirely of natural or recycled materials and featuring a pathway covered by arched bamboo. It provides a unique perspective on Baltimores waterfront projects of the past 40 years, one that empowers the individual and turns the determination of value and significance over to the public.

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John Boles May 10, 2013 Engraved in the brick paths that wind through the park are groups of homophones, underfoot and easily missed when overwhelmed by the frenetic pace of the Inner Harbor.

These linguistic groupings highlight the destabilization of language in the postmodern era. In The Postmodern Turn, Ihab Hassan notes the ambiguity, discontinuity, heterodoxy, pluralism, randomness, revolt, perversion, [and] deformation which define postmodernism and which, in doing so, effectively undermine any such overarching definitions (7). These varied meanings, he writes designate the capacity of mind to generalize itself in symbols, intervene more and more into nature, act upon itself through its own abstractions and so become, increasingly, immediately, its own environment (Hassan 7). The artificial ambiance and commercial infrastructure of the Inner Harbor resist such symbolic mental action, desiring the visitor to engage the space as a pure consumer deprived of alternative motives and submissive to the totality of its design and purpose. In Pierces Park, though, we find the first hint as to what the creation of Kriers good city would entail. A good city, as a start, can provide for the needs induced by the market-oriented language of contemporary communication, but also for the diverse

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John Boles May 10, 2013 and antagonistic voices that complicate and weaken that languages hegemony. True, the establishment of a completely non-commercial reflective haven so near to a vibrant consumer space could be viewed as one more feature of the late capitalist isolated and total environment. Nevertheless, its presence indicates a subtle resistance, a willingness to acknowledge the fiction, fragmentation, collage, and eclecticism which make up the modern urban space (Harvey 98).

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John Boles May 10, 2013 Works Cited Baudrillard, Jean. Selected Writings. Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 2002. Print. Harvey, David. The Condition of Postmodernity. Cambridge: Blackwell Publishing, 1990. Print. Hassan, Ihab. The Postmodern Turn: Essays in Postmodern Theory and Culture. Columbus: Ohio State University, 1987. Print. Hayward, Marry Ellen and Frank R. Shivers, Jr. The Architecture of Baltimore: An Illustrated History. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004. Print. Millspaugh, Martin L. Critical Mass. The Evening Sun 1 Jul. 1980: A11-A13. Print. Millspaugh, Martin L. Science Center, Booming at Last, Will Expand. The Evening Sun 22 Apr. 1982. Print. Serpick, Evan. The New Inner Harbor. Baltimore. Rosebud Entertainment, Jul. 2011. Web. 1 May 2013. Teaford, Jon C. The Twentieth-Century American City: Problem, Promise, and Reality (The American Moment). Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993. Print. Warhol, Andy. The Philosophy of Andy Warhol. Orlando: Harcourt, Inc., 1975. Print.

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