That which is immeasurable

Perhaps the most challenging aspect of urban design is for me is to give expression to that which is difficult to quantify. How do you measure vulnerability, joy, claustrophobia or solitude? 
City spaces inscribe these into our very being, yet in order to make spaces that heighten and evoke, these concepts must be quantified, contained, described and ultimately scrutinized at a budget meeting usually so mundane, that it too cannot be measured.

So, here is some delicious poetry as a necessary departure from a pragmatic dogmatic systematic hepatic system where the heart of the city has been muted and those who inhabit its streets stand petrified by change. 
Written as one does of love. 


Oh city, my aching contradiction
Your beauty is a hushed sentiment I encourage 
every time I close my eyes
Your solitude overwhelms me with the stench of love unmade
You would have loved me if I were a soft spring rain, 
but I was born a hurricane, and I nearly died tying to be small.

Oh city, the kiss of water in my lungs
In creases and in dog-eared promises.
The night pressed in as though I alone was responsible for your shadow
How is it that you are composed of such absence

I searched the urban imagined to find respite from your charcoal gaze
Flawed celebrations invaded my quietest moments 
where your taste was most real
Walk with me. Speak to me of the ordinary
and whisper to me in the language of tormented cities