The Chumash people, so the legend goes, were created when the earth goddess Hutash planted seeds on Santa Cruz Island. The seeds became men and women. Over time the people prospered and filled the island. Hutash built a bridge using a rainbow and they crossed to the mainland, populating the area.
Cities grow like seeds. An encampment becomes a village. The village attracts people from other areas, bringing in new ideas.
Shelters become buildings which in turn become permanent features. The village grows into a town and the town becomes a city.
The city of San Buenaventura is especially interesting because the unfolding process is clearly visible at every stage. Throughout the city you can see evidence of each stage of the city’s growth.
The Process of Unfolding
“A child becomes an adult without ever losing uniqueness or completeness,” writes architect Christopher Alexander in his four-volume essay The Nature of Order. “An acorn transforms smoothly into an oak, although the starting point and end point are radically different. A good building or city will unfold according to the living processes that generate living structure.”
Alexander believes that certain processes of design and building will naturally create structures that feel “alive.” Essentially these processes are small steps that make a site a little better, a little more complex, a little richer. At each step careful consideration of the existing site comes into play. The result is a structure that feels whole and deeply connected to the surrounding area.
Not every design will create this sense of life. Plans that seem to work on the drawing board without consideration of the surrounding area are unlikely to have this feeling of life when they are finally built. This feeling of not-aliveness is characteristic of many “futuristic” designs from the 1950s through the postmodern 1990s.
The city of Ventura has clear examples of both types of processes along with a renewed commitment to redevelopment that is more likely to create the sense of “aliveness” that Alexander talks about.
Unfolding Ventura
The growth of the city of Ventura took place over thousands of years, from the earliest arrival of the Chumash people. The pace of growth accelerated in 1782 when Spanish missionaries built their first structure.
Here are the general stages of unfolding that the city of Ventura has gone through over the years:
1st Unfolding – Shisholop (1000 AD – 1769 AD) – Humans have lived along the California coast for 12,000 years. Archeological records show that the village of Shisholop (“muddy place”) was settled around 1000 AD by the Chumash people. They had a rich culture and traded with surrounding tribes.
2nd Unfolding – San Miguel Chapel (1769 – 1782) – Spanish missionaries, led by Junipero Serra, thought Ventura would be an ideal site for a mission. They were impressed by the basketry of the Chumash, which they took as a sign of high intelligence. San Miguel Chapel was the first outpost and was built close to the village of Shisholop, separated by a muddy tidal area.
3rd Unfolding – Mission San Buenaventura (1782 – 1822) – The Mission San Buenaventura was built directly North of the Shisholop village, forming a new focal point and center of activity. Notice the rough symmetry of the orchard and vineyard areas in relationship to the chapel and native village.
4th Unfolding – Mexican Land Grants (1833 – 1848) – Following Mexico’s independence from Spain the Spanish mission system was secularized, meaning that land holdings belonging to the Church were divided and granted to private citizens. In 1841 Rancho San Miguel was granted to Raimundo Olivas and in 1846 the Ex-Mission San Buenaventura tract was given to José de Arnaz, forming the broad outline of Ventura for years to come.
5th Unfolding – Agricultural Period (1849 – 1919) – After a long period of boundary expansion the city of Ventura began to fill in. The Mission remained a central point but new centers grew up around agricultural areas. Stores, businesses and government centers began to emerge around the Mission. The architecture changed from Spanish adobe style buildings to wood and timber Victorian structures.
6th Unfolding – Oil Boom (1920 – 1950s) – The discovery of the Ventura oil field, a vast pool of oil that runs from East to West in the area between Ventura and Oak View, launched a frenzy of development in the area along Ventura Avenue. This boom brought banks and financial interests to town, changing the architecture from wooden buildings to quarried stone and brick.
While it seems very industrial, look at the order and symmetry of the structures, how they have naturally unfolded in place and contribute to a sense of “aliveness.”
7th Unfolding – Modern Era (1950s – 1990s) Following World War II American planners and architects became obsessed with the future and began designing for machine-like efficiency. Social activities were divided and centralized – tracts of housing in one area, schools and churches in another area, shopping in yet another area. Supermarkets promised one-stop shopping and were set back from the street to accommodate the necessary parking.
The natural unfolding that began in the 1700s was broken by this new process of urban design, and each successive generation is almost guaranteed to reproduce the new dysfunctional and not-aliveness of the modern era.
8th Unfolding – SOAR and Infill (1990s – present) In the late 1980s to 1990s the city of Ventura went through an extensive period of surveys, audits, interviews that involved participation from the entire community. This process took place alongside a series of county-wide initiatives known as SOAR, Save Our Open Spaces and Agricultural Resources.
The result of this process is the 2005 Ventura General Plan. The plan promotes growth without expansion, focusing on improving daily activities of residents. Initial parts of the plan have resulted in the revitalization of Ventura’s historic downtown area.
Further Reading:
Unfolding Cities – Notes from an experimental seminar
Pattern Language – Site exploring the work of Christopher Alexander
LA Times article – STRUCTURES : Function and Grace : The Ventura High School campus is a mixture of Streamline Moderne and later ground-hugging styles.
