I was leafing through Invisible Cities (Italo Calvino) over break - an effective exercise for deconstructing our urban perspectives - and I read the following, "the city must never be confused with the words that describe it." It got me back to thinking that planners employ a pathetic set of adjectives to articulate the urban environments. Vibrant is one word I have a particularly hard time with because its highly subjective. Define what vibrant is to you and you'll probably find a succint definition of the kind of neighborhood that you prefer to live in given your (sub)cultural lifestyle, values, socio-economic status (cafes and boutiques anyone?). The retail center that one planner thinks might make a vibrant neighborhood might just end up evicting the current residents that another planner thinks give the neighborhood it's vibrancy. As planners, we all want neighborhoods full of energy and civic enthusiasm (vibrancy), and as a policy/design goal, shouldn't it be taken as a given? By defining "vibrant neighborhood" to ourselves, we might understand our personal values. But as professionals, when we substitute subjective adjectives like "vibrant" in place of more specific descriptions, do we surreptitiously impose our values on to plans?
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