How to Avoid a Misplaced Place
An Organization Asks What if the "City Different" Was More the "City Same"
In the past several years, I’ve watched many facets of the design review process in my hometown disappear in the hope of accelerating development approvals and enhancing affordability. Ironically, during my five years in the United Kingdom, design review practices returned—not least at a national level.
Now, as a New Mexico Newbie, I see new episodes of the same drama playing out yet again as the City Different (Santa Fe) addresses one irony of architectural style, where, arguably, opulence has often overshadowed the needs of the underserved in the spirit of capitalism, civic promotion, and inadvertent Disneylands.
Last Thursday night, I was reminded why a place’s scale, color, and materials—accompanied by deep hospitality and nuances of history—real and imagined—could work a fraud on our senses.
What exactly do I mean, especially in a context where Native American, Hispanic, and Anglo influences simultaneously merge and conflict as they have for hundreds of years?
Santa Fe—at least the historic downtown and adjacent historic districts—is a very comfortable place, with repetitive architectural treatments on a human scale.
However, many argue that the Santa Fe Style—which invokes tourism and comfort as a customized remnant of the City Beautiful era—is a 100-year-old manufactured aesthetic that may no longer serve its purpose. The Style’s allure, they rationalize, obscures underlying issues of affordability and access, making it difficult for long-time residents to remain and age in place.
Friends of Architecture Santa Fe are conducting a series to explore what might happen if the City Different becomes more of the City Same.
During his Thursday night presentation, Friends President Anthony Guida asked the audience to consider how Santa Fe evolved. First, an architectural revival style successfully replenished the appeal of a capital city bypassed by the railroad. Later, the city embraced the Style as a controlling, aesthetic force extending to strip malls and chain stores.
What if no prescriptive historic ordinances had mandated uniformity in the last thirty years, he mused?
By implication—using the foil of Back to the Future, Guida jumped between eras and nudged the audience to envision a Santa Fe with a pattern of more diverse architectural expressions, blending Pueblo Revival with more contemporary designs that reflect the multicultural heritage of its residents, as well as modern challenges such as climate change, enhanced walkability, more creative use of density, and housing affordability. A participatory exercise followed.
The soft babble of the audience sent me back to law practice experiences long ago in Connecticut and across the New York border, to observing and later writing about the best preserved Australian historic downtown in Fremantle, to conversing with exhibitors in Santiago de Compostela, Spain aiming for more contact between Camino pilgrims and residents, to wondering why Margate and Bristol in England—with the same bones, have evolved so differently. I remember my experiences as outside counsel for an idyllic Washington State community, teaming with the same consulting firm now under contract to revise the Santa Fe Land Development Code.
The Friends inquiry also aligns closely with the themes of my 2021 book, Sustaining a City’s Culture and Character. The book emphasizes the importance of understanding the elements of and basis for a city’s current identity, blending its cultural heritage with contemporary needs, and the role that co-creation approaches within urban planning play in fostering community. At that time, I wish I had been more familiar with Chris Wilson’s The Myth of Santa Fe, which served as a take-off point (and bibliography entry) for Guida’s messaging.
My point? I hope not to be self-indulgent but to reflect on familiar turf in a new place.
By merging a history of an architectural style with contemporary goals such as climate change adaptation, walkability, and resilience, Friends will hold a March 8 “Restyle” charrette to examine how Santa Fe could further celebrate diversity and expand residents' role as stakeholders in the city’s future.
In keeping with my experiences elsewhere and related research, I appreciate Friends’ advocacy of an essential and sincere dialogue about reshaping the narrative around the Santa Fe Style and avoiding physical determinism, where the built environment and framing decisions over-dictates social and other environmental outcomes.
Tweaking plan language and employing regulatory tools are not enough; a focused, contextual, and collaborative approach involving city planners, businesses, community leaders, and residents is crucial for crafting a vision that genuinely reflects the values and needs of all inhabitants.
Ultimately, the challenge remains: How can Santa Fe—and other cities with recognizable signatures—modify their architectural identity to reflect the richness of their diverse populations while embracing contemporary issues?
Pluralistic approaches, like that of Friends of Architecture Santa Fe, balance the past's ongoing appeal with local needs and evolving local voices and aim for “ReVision” of previously restrictive shells.