I would like to pass along some observations to those who would care to re-design Black Rock City. The primary criteria were, and still are:
1. Logistics – i.e. getting people, supplies, and emergency services in, around, and and out of the city as efficiently easily as possible.
2. Safety – being able to easily re-orient one’s self. Facilitate mentally conceptualizing the plan, and the location of places in it. Allowing, but limiting auto speed and traffic.
3. Familiarity – Maintaining historical reference to the previous Burning Man events (i.e. Center Camp). Modeling the block size after a typical city block. Keeping the Burning Man as the primary visual focus, while still separated for the Burn.
4. Social aspects – Defining a camping area where all felt as one of a single community. Allotting public space. Defining an amount of space per campsite (became self-regulating). Allowing in the greater Black Rock Desert by preserving an open view to the North East.

One might refine that down to just logistics and social, but there were multitudes of secondary criteria involved in the original scheme. Since then, there have been hundreds of modifications, many simply to accommodate population growth. I won’t go into further detail, but it remains for you to consider all factors and their ramifications. It may be sobering to realize that you have fifty thousand people dependent on that, and with their very lives in your hands.

saludos, Rod

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This last year was the first time in my 3 years at BRC that I was camped on an outer ring (6:45 at J). Yet with the city winding around in a circular way to both sides of 6 o”clock, you have the outer rings between 6:30 through 10 picking up a lot of dust traveling parallel to 6. We also picked up the sewer smells from the porta-potty trans-shipment station. These outer rings and their camps act as wind and dust screens for the inner rings. Earlier I was usually around 8:30 and D. I would assume the same goes on from 5:30 to 2, only without the sewer smell.

You can probably make the case, that historically, wind protection had a role in the shaping of cities. Like perhaps pueblos built into mesa cave facing the sun and perhaps shielded from the winter winds. In San Franciso, this is some indication that the Indians did not choose to dwell in the northern wind and fog swept sand dune part of the city (Sunset, Richmond, Pacific Hts, SOMA, Downtown), but instead chose more temperate, if not seasonally temporary, locations in the fog and wind protected Mission District before the Mission was there.

Who would choose to build their city in an unprotected, open desert? These people must be crazy!

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Other cities can use sheer height to create a focus, like Manhattan to the Empire State Building. In San Francisco, one of the main axis is a line that connections the Ferry Building to Twin Peaks. You know you are on Market Street as you can see both, and know where you are by which is straight ahead. Imagine having a Mr. Man at one end of a big vista and a Mrs. Man (the Temple?) at the other, with the city laid out around the axis of those two. It is very interesting that historically, Market Street was laid out in the first few years of San Francisco by 1853. Though it was in the Planning Books, it did not exist until several decades later, as very large sand dunes had to be removed to create the lenght of Market Street. Instead, you went to Market street which was only a few blocks long and wandered through a dug out canyon thorugh a dune to get to Mission Street which was based on an old path that was easier to traverse, once a wood plank road was installed at great expense in the 1850′s. So the “concept” of the central axis of Market Street turned out to be a powerful planning goal that perservered through decades until it was realized.

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What feels strange is putting the loud sound camps out at 2 and 10, which in effect lets them collide with the desert and the art installations. Do the large sound camps really need to be attached to the city? What happens if you put them in an area and separate them from the art installation desert?

Maybe something like this where you have the Esplanade run from Sound Camps facing into the open desert at one end to art installations in the open desert at the other end, with Center Camp in the middle of the Esplanade and the neighborhood stretches out from either side of the Esplanade. But where would the Man and the Temple go? Maybe each year they would alternate between one being near the Sound Camps and the other being amid the art installations?

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These days in cities, a big deal, since we are no longer creating new frontier towns, is re-thinking what we have. So here in San Francisco we’re starting to get these wonderful little park-let inserted into what seemed like bland, used streets and intersections and the Presideo is developing into something quite nice. So you could say, why not tweak Burning Man that way. And that seems to be what has been going on over the years.

Yet also in San Francisco, we are in the middle of adding the biggest new section to the city in years – Missions Bay. Mission Bay started out with a bang, canals, low residential units, tall thin highrises in a plan by the Pei office of NYC. But various neighborhood complained about the tall towers. So by the third master plan by other folks, to keep the same amount of square footage, Mission Bay is going ahead, and guess what, it’s looks like the worst of San Francisco teleported into the 21st century – unreleaved block after block of 7 story buildings with no connection to the place’s water roots and no sense of the area’s roots in tidal marshes and mud flats. It’s like SOMA extended. And in the mean time, the City is now allowing tall thin buildings elsewhere.

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While the current design works, and works well, is it really the only possible configuration for Black Rock City?

As a 10 year in a row attendee, sometimes I also long to arrive on the playa and see something truely different. Imagine Center Camp being way out at 12:00 all by itself like a sparkling oasis in the dark, or how about seperate “villages” in deep playa, maybe small 4X4 grids with theme camps.

Whatever the configuration, I’m sure it can be done. I know changing the status quo can be a bitch sometimes, maybe even expensive, but this is Burning Man, a continous re-invention and experimentation, why not change it up and see what other possibilities are?

Just as the 1997 Haulupa playa year led to the discovery of some new designs, there could be other possibilites that are even better than the current design that won’t be discovered until they are tried.

My 2 cents.

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Sustainability is a big issue in urban planning these days, but BRC is anything but sustainable, relying entirely on fossil fuels and materials brought in from outside. OTOH, the only 100% sustainable building is no building at all…

I noticed the density also. It’s rather low, actually – suburban rather than urban. And everyone seems to stake out a little “yard” with a fence!

With regard to culture and zoning. Has anyone else noticed that BM has turned into Raver Central? In years past I remembered brass marching bands and taiko ensembles, but the last time I went it seemed like there was nothing but thumping electronica at top volume day and night, no matter where I was.

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The suggestion of radical city re-configuration ignores my opening analogy. This could be considered similar to re-assembling a car in a different way – while the result may be more interesting, the issue is whether it will remain functional and safe.

There was never anything arbitrary in the city design, and it has evolved and been highly tuned over time. The city’s plan is meant to provide the structure to allow vibrant change within it, but also does change to a degree every year. As 50,000 lives, and coordinated procedures are involved, each modification is carefully considered by all departmental staff who’s work may be affected, and total consensus is required for approval.

Such adaptation will doubtless continue, but on the surface may look more like this year’s model than a total concept car.

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