18 January 08: The Possible City
Estuary of Dreams


Empress of China by Raymond Massey

by Nathaniel Popkin
January 18, 2008

There is a city along a river a hundred miles or so inland from the ocean. At times grand and ambitious -- it has been a trading center for centuries -- the city boasts a growing skyline. It is a large and bustling place but has been careful to preserve its traditional streetscape too, ancient architecture, and a neighborhood-based culture. It has one famous university but is renowned as a center for medicine. Nevertheless it lives right in the shadow of another city, this one a world capital of culture and finance.

In the last decade and a half of the eighteenth century, Philadelphia merchant shipman found this city indispensable in establishing trade independent from Britain. They also found its waters eerily familiar, for the path in from the sea then up the river to the city's port appeared identical to that of the voyage through the Delaware estuary and up the tidal river to Philadelphia. They delighted in this doppelganger, so much so that trade with this city soared, bringing sought after items like porcelain, tea, and silk and making the Quaker City rich.

Guangzhou, the energetic city on the Pearl River, is this double.



The city once known as Canton is a provincial capital of seven to 10 million people that lies in the shadow of Hong Kong. The improbable duplication of form was mere coincidence, of course, but it gave Philadelphia firms and financiers a sense that they controlled the nascent trade, and all the global connections it implied. In fact, Robert Morris along with Daniel Parker of New York sent the first American ship, the Empress of China, to Guangzhou and by 1800, forty Philadelphia-owned and based ships worked the China trade exclusively.

Not insignificantly, this early predominance in trade with China made Philadelphia the largest city in the new world. In his essay on "The Athens of America," the historian Edgar Richardson says that the China trade not only brought Chinese goods to America (much of which were already available through the East India Company), but access to the ancient, wealthy culture of the East. This was critical because trade builds relationships; it is the basis of a cosmopolitan city -- in this case, a profound one.

There have been a handful of attempts, including "world trade" and "free trade" schemes and zones, to reestablish Philadelphia's predominance in trade. As of the late1950s, our port handled 45 million metric tons of goods, much of it export; today the port (not including Gloucester City) moves 5.3 million metric tons, most of that import. The folks who manage the Philadelphia port, however, are ambitious dreamers who believe Philadelphia offers advantages over other ports (inter-modal connections in particular). They actively seek business, a tenacity that is beginning to pay off with extensive South American and now Mediterranean shipments. This growth is fueling the Port's desire to expand the Packer Marine Terminal -- a project called South Port -- onto the environmentally sensitive eastern portion of the Navy Yard once sought by the Produce Distribution Center.

One of the obstacles to early trade with China was that while the Chinese were producing goods in great demand in the West, America had little to send in return. Philadelphia shippers were forced to triangulate trade -- that is to find a third party -- so that when they arrived in Guangzhou they would have something to exchange for tea and silks. Currency and power (what the Chinese get today from trade with the US) wouldn't satisfy the Chinese appetite, so shippers like Mordecai Lewis and James Large Mifflin made stops through Europe, the Mediterranean, and even the Pacific, where they traded for things the Chinese desired: hides and furs -- nearly making sea otters and seals extinct -- sandalwood, tin, and opium.

Today's one-way shipping industry puts our port promoters in a similar situation. Ships leave Philadelphia empty; contemporary shippers too are forced to triangulate so that ocean voyages aren't wasted. But trade is supposed to be just that, an exchange, a way to bring people together, the way for cultures to learn from and build upon each other. Of course thanks to globalization, migration, and mass media this is happening already; and what the Chinese desire from us nowadays is market-share, access to all those American consumers. So, is there room for the old-fashioned act of exchange? And if so, how can Philadelphia benefit?

There is room, of course: the hundreds of acres of the vast Naval Shipyard, really our city's door to the world. The Navy Yard is a strange and wonderful place, as architecture students here at Philadelphia University came to realize this fall semester. About 45 students led by architects Sean Dougherty and Troy Leonard, and Bennur Koksuz, chief of the City Planning Commission's urban design unit, interrogated the site. Some were left dumbfounded by the scale of decay, the sense of loneliness, an eerie place adrift. Others saw the water and sky, sensing not isolation but connection -- from this city through the lens of its historical position -- to the rest of the globe.



It's easy to fall in love with the adaptive reuse of those handsome brick and terracotta machine houses, with Richard Hayne's engorgement of the creative class, with the dinghies and barges that rock and float on that little bit of little Amsterdam. It's a place of marvels, of disjuncture, of variety.

I visited the Navy Yard with Paul Dry, the witty and exacting book publisher, and his business partner John Corenswet. After lunch at Urban Outfitters, Dry, who revels in the grit of possibility, navigated us through the tall weeds and decommissioned bridges, repeating, "Nathaniel, can you imagine the scale?" Dry was right: it is almost unimaginable: the size of the ships, the distances, the mass of the buildings, the acres of decay (to this Corenswet, who is from New Orleans, said that in comparison to the Lower Ninth Ward, the blocks of decomposing, weed-choked housing at the east end of the Navy Yard appear in great condition). It's a scale of human endeavor that, beyond a Comcast Center, we rarely ever approach.

Which is why the city's plan for the Navy Yard -- a master plan developed by Robert A. M. Stern, who doesn't always produce his best work for Philadelphia -- seems inadequate. It lacks ambition enough to match the scale, the pull of history, the site's position on the wide, compelling river. According to Koksuz, the city's vision for the yard keeps changing -- from suburban office park to an Old City -- and this ambivalence is why the Stern plan is vague and uninspiring.

At present, the transition of the Navy Yard exemplifies the Philadelphia way: a handful of brilliant moves triggered by private initiative but without collective vision, a backwards gaze at history, a stubborn refusal to give up traditional industry. There is no cohesion, which the Stern plan is supposed to provide, but because it is so uninspiring, it can't muster enough energy to do so. The plan, for example, includes an extension of the Broad Street subway from the Pattison terminal, through the Navy Yard. The need for this goes without saying, but the project's sponsor PIDC won't raise the necessary funds to extend the subway without sharp and exciting vision.

Besides, nothing more ought to be done with the Navy Yard unless there is agreement at the highest level to extend the subway. About 7,500 people work there now, nearly every one of them dependent on the automobile.

A subway extension and light rail system was incorporated into the student projects, which included some thoughtful and expressive ideas: a museum of Richard Serra's sculpture; a marine archeology center; a library of human experience. A handful of students sought to engage with the water; to create neutral spaces for disparate users (shipbuilders and fashion designers, e.g.); to use existing structures, ships, and water access.



There's enough land and raw potential to keep you up all night moving pieces around the ersatz chessboard. But where are the royal jewels to exchange for the porcelain and silk? Urban Outfitters employs hundreds of creative people to design clothing, art, and furniture, most of it made in China; those bright young people mine the globe for ideas, they translate, and transform them into fashion (I'll take a pass on UO's business practices). Value is added at every step of the way. Philadelphia and Guangzhou grow richer.

Philadelphia doesn't have many Urban Outfitters, but it does have 82 colleges and universities. "Education is our business," says the Mayor and he is right. Education and medical institutions are the backbone of our economy. All those students and faculty, their research, innovations, ideas, books, and intellectual pursuits -- and all the inherent exchange -- is currency. And every one of those institutions is seeking ways to connect more profoundly with the rest of the world, in particular to China and the Far East, where until a few years ago the exchange was one-way: Japanese and Chinese students came to America to study, bringing expertise back home (completing the trade loop). Presently, vast connections are being forged between and among Philadelphia institutions in all disciplines -- from the Annenberg School at Penn to Arcadia's program in international relations -- with Chinese universities and poly-technical institutes. (All this exchange is one reason US Airways will add a Philadelphia-Beijing route next year.)

These nascent relationships (which extend beyond China, of course, to the Middle East, South America, and Eastern Europe) are being forged department by department, one fact-finding trip at a time. But taken together they represent one of the most compelling ways for Philadelphia to reassert itself as a center for global trade: the trade of ideas, information, discovery, and culture. If played right, Philadelphia can claim the physical presence of this trade: a campus of international universities in America. That campus should be placed at the Navy Yard.

Before I get into any detail, it's worth noting some challenges to the implementation of this idea. First off, there is such strong personal initiative in academia that getting institutions to work together will be difficult. Second, there is convincing argument to be made for building such a campus -- to start it would be small -- in University City, where there is already a Higher Ed infrastructure in place. Related, there might be good reason to keep the students and faculty of these international universities closer to Center City, where their presence might have a greater impact. Air traffic is constant over the Navy Yard, posing a challenge to a residential component and finally, as a real estate deal, the campus would stretch PIDC's capacity and willingness to alter financial models. The deal would take time, include a lot of foreign money, and require a large degree of cooperation.

But imagine the upside. From nineteenth century missionaries to twentieth century cold warriors, Americans found reason to project our culture, education system, and economy abroad. As such, American universities in Beirut, Paris, Istanbul, Athens, Bulgaria, Dubai, London, Rome, Cairo, Sharjah (UAE), Palestine, Girne (Cyprus), Central Asia, Armenia, etc. provide English language higher education around the world. A few of these -- Paris and Cairo, especially -- are first-rate institutions that attract highly qualified international students. Their campuses are vibrant global villages inside of vibrant cities, one reinforcing the other.

Let's suppose someone figures out that our most promising relationships are with institutions in China, Brazil, Chile, and Turkey and that those nations, for reasons of politics and economics, want to reach a North American audience -- with their own equivalent of an American University (La Universidad de Chile en Estados Unidos, por ejemplo). Conversely, they want to provide a formal entry for their citizens to study and live in the US -- in their native language. Why do they choose Philadelphia, and not New York, for example? The easy answer is the availability of land in proximity to the center. The new campus of the American University in Cairo, for example, is 260 acres just outside the city center. A handful of these institutions altogether will require that much to start. But the more compelling reason is this: Philadelphia needs to. If education is our business, it is our currency. It is what we have to trade on.

So how might it work? With some prodding, local university presidents might be able to get a handle on the emerging international programs, take an accounting of relationships and scholarship back and forth. An example is the Annenberg's Center for Global Communication Studies, directed by Monroe Price. The center has programs in Britain, Hungary, and China among other places, Philadelphia serving as the center of a constant flux of students and faculty. Multiply Price's center across dozens of university departments and you have a web of international relationships centered in Philadelphia. Amalgamate those relationships and you might give reason for officials at Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou to want to establish a Chinese university base of operations in Philadelphia.

Now imagine a waterfront campus housing several international institutions who share facilities and pedagogic models (with each other and our own host institutions), programmatic space for Philadelphia college and universities' international initiatives, seminars, lectures, and all the output of a scholarly and cultural exchange. Imagine a Philadelphia whose purpose and strength is to be open to the world. The most compelling cosmopolitan cities are those so secure in their outlook they can be confidently open to people projecting their own culture and language. There's much to be gained by this exchange, not only culturally but economically. Investment desires openness; it abhors parochialism. Thus, Spain, with its enormous Latino immigration, is booming, while ever-more parochial Italy is not.

American universities abroad are useful because they allow students in disparate countries to take part in the American way. It's a State Department sales pitch on the methods of American pedagogy, much of which has multiculturalism as its foundation. Here's a way to turn it back on ourselves, to learn and adapt other models and languages, and to fuse relationships with corporations and employers abroad.

Meanwhile, our doppelganger, Guangzhou, keeps growing. At 80 stories, its Citic Plaza is the tallest reinforced concrete building in the world. Since it was built in 1997, they have added the 52 story Victory Plaza, the 56 story Dapeng International Plaza, and the 62 story China International Center. The 103 story multi-tower Guangzhou International Finance Center will be completed next year.

It's still the estuary of dreams.

–Nathaniel Popkin
nathaniel.popkin@gmail.com

Raymond Massey print via Grace Galleries; CITIC Plaza photo via Skyscrapercity.com

POSSIBLE CITY ARCHIVES:

• 11 Jan 08: More than shelter
• 10 Jan 08: Nature's balance
• 6 Dec 07: Snake uprising
• 4 Dec 07: A Junction that ought to be
• 6 Nov 07: Around the Mulberry Tree we go
• 29 Oct 07: Wondering about wandering
• 5 Oct 07: No other way
• 21 Sept 07: Here is the Possible City


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