过往构成现实：四个山区城镇的城市形态

作者：杰克 威廉姆斯

翻译：张诗阳

校正：王明睿

过往构成现实：四个山区城镇的城市形态

作者：杰克 威廉姆斯

翻译：张诗阳

校正：王明睿

美国包含有两大山脉：分别是东部的阿帕拉契山脉和西部的科迪勒拉山系的大落基山脉部分。与矿物或者煤炭开采相关的小型城镇曾经遍布于每一条山脉的不同区域之中。由于世界对于铜矿和煤炭需求量显著降低，居民离开了这些城镇，其经济活力也逐渐崩溃。被遗留下来的是一些美国最独特的城镇形式，其巧妙适应地形和交通网络的方式值得详细研究。

城镇形态；资源依赖型城镇；山地住宿设施；乡土建筑和设计；煤炭型城镇；铜矿型城镇；铁路型城镇；落基山脉；阿帕拉契山脉

两座庞大的山脉围住了整个北美大陆（图1）。在东部地区， 古老的阿帕拉契亚山（Appalachians）沿着大西洋海岸，从美国境内的佐治亚州开始，向东北方绵延1 000多英里（1609.34km）直至加拿大。早在北美大陆定型之前，由于大陆板块的移动，阿帕拉契亚山就已经形成。经历了亿万年的时间，山脉被侵蚀成了陡峭但海拔相对较低的山地，其上密林覆盖。由于阿帕拉契亚山脉阻碍了欧洲人对北美内陆地区的探险，其广阔性极大限制了其沿线人类聚落的扩展。在西部地区，地质形成年代较晚且海拔较高的落基山脉（Rocky Mountains）构成了一个广阔的南北向山脉群的一个部分，该山脉群北起阿拉斯加，向下穿过加拿大和美国，转弯形成中美洲，然后延伸至南美洲的最南端，终结于阿根廷最偏远的地区，即火地岛省。当这个因灾难性地质断裂而形成的巨大抬升缝穿越美国时，其向两侧扩展形成一系列相互交织的山脉，东侧是著名的落基山脉，西侧是加州和俄勒冈山

脉及瀑布。落基山脉是一做真正的“科迪勒拉”（cordillera），“科迪勒拉”一词源自西班牙语，指的是那些绵延上千英里的由诸多独立命名之山脉交织而成的编织绳状山系。科迪勒拉山系延绵1 000余英里（1609.34km），由许多独立命名的平行山脉、山间高原和盆地共同组成。除落基山脉外，这一山系主要还包含内华达州和俄勒冈州的大盆地中的沙漠地带。正如编织绳一般，该山系中的一些山脉散开而延伸进了其他不同山区，譬如瓦扎茨山区、苦根山区——这些山区的名字与印第安人及其对抗欧洲人扩张的历史相关。

在阿帕拉契亚山脉和落基山脉之间，是世界上最大、最平坦也是最肥沃的平原之一——美国大平原，密苏里河和密西西比河构成的水网体系保障了整个区域的排水问题。中部大平原是美国历史中占据核心位置，其农业产出刺激了这个国家的快速扩张，也意味着北美大陆两侧的山区不必被用以安置不断增长的美国人口，除非是因采矿需要而在山区建立定居点。由欧洲移民过来的美国人将落基山脉和阿帕拉契亚山脉都看作是他们迁往更易定居、更多产、更为平坦土地的障碍。这就导致了位于山上的聚落变的越来越被孤立，生存在那里的人们仅依赖于开采山中蕴藏的丰富矿产，比如阿帕拉契亚山地区的煤炭开采或落基山地区的铜、金及银矿的开采产业。随着作为其唯一财富来源的矿产资源（铜矿或煤矿）因市场需求变化而波动，这些资源依赖型城镇（或被称之为单一资源型城镇）崛起、繁荣、挣扎并最终破败。来自这些范围狭小之城镇外部的经济力量决定了城镇的未来，正如多数依赖单一资源开采的经济系统一样，上述地区的市场份额被世界其他地方抢走了，这些地方拥有更低成本的开采方法、更新更快的交通方式以及更清洁的能源。因此， 美国的山区中散落着许多被遗忘的小城镇，它们在全球资本竞争中被遗弃，而处于极为脆落的状态中，曾经美丽的地方如今除了贫穷与怀旧一无所有，慢慢湮没无闻。本文聚焦这些荒弃城镇中的四个，探究其城镇形态，及其在未来不明朗的情况下的危险现状。

资源依赖型城镇往往聚集在它们开采矿产所在区域的周边，有时沿着一个地质断层分布，亦或是沿着一条纵贯山谷或沿山而上的地缝分布。深埋地底的矿产决定了城镇的位置，由于城镇的位置和生存只是依赖于单一矿产，它的兴衰完全取决这种矿物在世界市场中的需求波动状况。围绕类似矿业经济发展起来的一个更大区域内的所有城镇会一起衰败，无望找到替代性的财富创造途径。正如我们将看到的，煤矿型城镇和铜矿型城镇在其各自区域内发生集体性衰败，使得其生存变得不可能。这被我称之为级联效应，就如同用纸牌叠搭建起的房子突然倒塌一样。这种级联效应并不只出现在矿产开采和资源依赖型的城镇中，美国有许多整个区域都衰落的例子， 譬如东部海港城、新英格兰地区工业城镇，甚至是大平原上的农业城镇。

许多深陷美国山区中的城镇都将逐渐消失。然而，研究它们的城镇形态对于了解我们的历史以及设想未来至关重要。如今人们的居住模式变得越来越同质化，我们有必要去回顾一些早先的案例，它们即使在当今各城市越来越以环状方式向大都市区聚集的情况下仍然保留着其形态的多样性。要理解这些偏远的小城镇，首先需要解释“城市形态”这一说明性的抽象概念，城市形态即使在城镇人口迁出且其结构被人遗忘后仍然存在。

一个城镇之形态由许多不同部分所组成，但任何一个部分都不如整体重要，这个整体包含了建筑、诸如街道等公私空间、树木、以及该城镇在其所处地形环境中的位置。我们都认可，纽约的摩天大楼及高密度建筑（路网如峡谷般沿南北向和东西向延伸）是我们最引人瞩目的城镇形态之一。从高空俯瞰，抑或是穿越哈德逊河从远处眺望，纽约的城镇形态展现出的，是人类聚居能力的象征性图景。小型城镇，乃至迷你城镇，同样具备其城镇形态。 城镇也许是将我们一些小实验建成了模型，而这些小实验大多会发展为更大的构成，不过全球各地也存在紧凑的小型城市构成。例如，在中国安徽省存在许多广为人知的、美丽的高密度城镇，它们由易于组合的居住单元集聚而成，每一个单元都拥有自己的私人庭院。这些中国城镇具有几乎实心的城市形态，在建筑街区中仅有窄弄这种尺度极小的公共开放空间存在。笔者认为城市构成是一种伟大的艺术形式，那些城镇，特别是那些大都市是人类艺术的伟大杰作。

校对简介：

王明睿/1993年生/男/硕士生/北京林业大学园林学院（北京 100083）

Proofreading:

WANG Ming-rui, who was born in 1993, is the Master of Landscape Architecture student in School of Landscape Architecture, Beijing Forestry University.

欲确定一个城镇的形态，首先需要决定该城镇在其所处地形条件 （这是它的自然背景）中的位置。一个小镇的位置、建筑和街道布局必然受到这些地形因素的限制。当在山区环境中建设城镇时，地形因素则显得尤其重要。 正如我们在本文中所分析的4个案例，美国山区中的城镇往往沿着山谷分布。同时，由于自然排水模式也是顺应山谷等高线，城镇总被建在溪流或河流之上或沿岸。 尽管看起来理所应当， 但这样的格局往往也会带来几种常见的后果，比如灾难性的周期性泛洪以及在更大地质区域中出于极为孤立的状态。位于山谷之中的城镇布局往往呈现出几种清晰的线状形式，以一种轻柔的方式适应地形状况，极少改造土地。大规模改造地形一般是为了开矿。具有讽刺意味的是，这些城镇虽然对于地形环境做出了和谐的回应， 但是自身却被地球上环境破坏和生态衰退最严重的地区所包围。 环境超载、矿渣堆、过滤池等因素使得城镇和居民处在被污染和危险的非宜居环境中。

一个城镇最初的街道布局必须符合地形。为了土地测量的便利，经过改造的方格网的某些形式被广泛用于美国各地。 因为大部分城镇最初都只能依靠铁路与外部进行贸易流通，而这些铁路往往沿着顺应水平等高线而沿着山谷溪流布置，所以位于山区的城镇发展出若干种反应铁轨弧线之形态。作为这些城镇唯一的公共空间，街道毗邻铁轨，因此街道的形式已经不仅仅是单纯的交通格局，同样也是一个人行公共空间的格局。街道就像房间，其宽度和断面由建筑和树木围合界定。公共空间应当是城镇形态中最重要的组成部分，然而我们很少将街道当作公共空间， 仅仅把它作为停车带和旅游的行进路线。小镇通常缺少易于识别的公共空间（美国的法院广场小镇除外）。然而即使是在最小型的城镇中，街道就如舞台一般，人们大部分的日常活动都发生在众目睽睽之下。

城镇的建筑可能相对缺乏特征，但仍起到围合的功能。建筑的布局、后退距离以及高度的一致性对于构成开放空间是极为重要的。地形区位、街道空间、建筑体量以及建筑物的分级共同搭建出城镇形态，而四种元素则一起形成了美丽的城镇肌理。本文中所探讨的四个城镇并非只是其过去生活的反应，即无装饰之建筑立面及其背后隐藏的住着不得不工作至深夜的穷人的内部空间；事实上，它们是充满人类希望与梦想的地方。我们应该将它们看作是艺术品，其价值由形式和内容所界定，也因其承载这些希望与梦想的能力。无论形态是二维还是三维的，无论是绘画、雕塑还是立体的城镇，形式都代表着比画布、砖块和砂浆上的作品更为深刻的意义。城镇代

表着社区共同体，即人类聚居的意愿和需要。在这层意义上，城镇是真实的艺术品，是一种复杂性思想的物质表现形式，这种思想不能从形式中剥离开来。

我选择了4个城镇作为美国山区中那些独特而各异的城市形态的代表案例。 其中两个位于阿帕拉契亚山脉，被称作煤炭城镇，它们的发展完全依赖于烟煤和无烟煤两种煤炭的开采。而这两种煤矿分布在阿帕拉契亚山脉两个完全不同的区域。另外两个则坐落于落基山脉西部地区，是亚利桑那州科罗拉多高原边缘地区的铜矿城镇。

煤矿业与铁路联系紧密，煤炭只能通过散装方式运输到市场，特别是运往那些特大型的都市中心。起初，人们通过运河开船运输，不过走水运也只能是一种暂时性的解决办法，因为水路运输很容易受季节性的结冰期或洪水期影响，在这些时间段里，水运是行不通的。到19世纪中期，铁路运输迅速成为了最有效率也是最实用的运输方式，铁路将大量的煤炭从阿帕拉契亚山脉运输到沿着东海岸分布的城镇，并通过中部大平原运往西部。当然，蒸汽机也需要依赖煤炭作为燃料。到19世纪后期，一辆辆漏斗车组成的长火车装载着煤炭，穿越蜿蜒的山区和美国大陆，在为火车自身提供燃料的同时，也为万千家庭提供暖气，为发电厂提供燃料以生产蒸汽，这些蒸汽是运营美国扩张中兴办的那些磨坊和工厂所必需的（图2）。铁路沿着河床（冲积沙洲和缓坡）进入山区，这些河流的向东和向西流出山区。蒸汽机在当时是效率极高的机器，但是其数量众多的活动部件需要工人不断地进行维护。在穿越陡峭地形区之蜿蜒铁轨沿线的任何平坦土地上，铁路公司都建立了维护设施、用以存车的调车场、以及机车修理棚。维护这些设施的工人必须和他们的家人一起住在设施附近。家庭的存在需要农产品、学校、教堂、社会机构以及住房，而这些都是小镇的组成部分。因此，在大山深处狭窄的冲积平原上，产生了这种称之为星座式小镇的城市形态，其沿狭窄山谷延展的形态让人联想到夜空中一个遥远的螺旋形星座诸多触角中的一个。西弗吉尼亚的韦尔奇就是这样的一个小镇。

韦尔奇镇位于阿巴拉契亚山脉深处的两个小溪汇流处。两条主要的铁轨沿着狭窄山谷，在进入煤矿开采地之前于韦尔奇镇汇合。19世纪阿巴拉契亚山脉区域的煤炭开采与现在完全不同，那会儿大多是矿井开采，横向和纵向的矿井渗透进位于陡峭山脉的折叠煤矿层中（图3）。煤炭被一种倒煤机器带到地表，并倒入等候的漏斗车中，并通过漫长的路程运出山区。散煤的运输利用重力的作用来提高效率，沿着阻力最小的坡道将煤炭从矿井运输到海拔较低的平坦地区。

一个简要的韦尔奇地图展现了许多蜿蜒分布的住区，它们的住宅均沿着顺河床设置的铁轨分布（图4）。韦尔奇的中心区域是一个相对较大的冲积平原，包含了几个铁路维修棚以及一个小型的商业中心。一个学校坐落在临近山谷的另一个平坦区域，而住宅则在远离中心的其他山谷之中。这是一种呼应于等高线和轨道的奇妙的适应性城市形态。

一张国家档案馆中由罗素•李拍摄的照片展现了1946年8月24日星期六下午韦尔奇（Welch）主街道的情景（图5）。这是一条拥挤的城市街道，发生着包括机动车交通和边道行人在内的很多活动。马路两侧是电影院和其他商店。陡峭的山体则作为背景，矗立在街道的远端。今天的韦尔奇街道上已没有了车流，电影院关门，店铺和餐馆也空无人烟（图6）。即使仍拥有诸多美丽建筑，韦尔奇镇仍在经济方面举步维艰（图7）。

在西弗吉尼亚州北部的宾夕法尼亚，由于地壳板块的激烈碰撞而使得阿巴拉契亚山脉产生了一个向东的急转弯。这一区域是无烟煤的主要产区。无烟煤是一种燃烧效率更高的煤，与产自西弗吉尼亚的烟煤相比，它可以产生更高的热量和更少烟雾。无烟煤产区的山谷被延长的山脊围合的更为笔直，从而在其聚落群中产生了另一类城市形态：由沿谷地成行整齐排列之构筑物组成的线性城镇。不同于以韦尔奇为代表的这些无烟煤城镇，宾夕法尼亚州的兰斯福德镇由五条相互平行的长街组成，这些街道被紧紧限制于一个山谷中（图8）。煤炭开采产生的大堆煤渣，堆积在街道的尽头。为了最大限度的提高山谷中的住宅数量，沿着平行的街道摆放了行列式住宅。这些两层的单户住宅往往共用一座墙体，并且每一家都有一个前廊和一个小的后院（图9）。由于煤炭公司拥有城镇边界外的所有土地，兰斯福德镇没有任何向外扩张的余地，在其有限的土地之外也没有建设燃气站或者大型的购物中心。当人们进入城镇，沿着长长的主街行走，到了尽头便突然的进入了山区。这五条平行街道的一个区域中的若干街区被开发成了包含商店和公用建筑的商业带。在一个紧凑的线性街区内，教堂坐落在街道的一侧，并与其自身的公共空间紧紧相邻（图10）。这是一种不同于美国其他城镇的一种极为引人注目的城市结构，假如其被置于某一大都市区周边将会很受欢迎。可惜的是，兰斯福德的年轻人逐渐的离开了这里，去那些围绕不断扩张之城市而新兴的大都市区寻找就业机会。严重的人口老龄化问题困扰着兰斯福德，让这座城镇的发展不能再持续下去。与无烟煤地区的其他城镇一样，兰斯福德的经济失去了活力。

作为本文第3个例子的山区城镇位于往西2 000英里（3 218.69km）的科罗拉多高原的边缘地区，该高原是一片绵延亚利桑那、犹他、科罗拉多河新墨西哥四个州的广袤台地。科罗拉多高原位于落基山中科罗拉多地区的编织状线性山脉之中，具体位于沃萨奇岭与桑格里克里斯托山区之间。科罗拉多高原的匀质地表上分布着比美国其他地质区域都多的国家果园，包括大峡谷。经过上万年的水流冲刷，高原上形成了许多世界上独特的地理景观。沿着其被称为“莫高隆边缘”的贯穿亚利桑那州的南缘，水流切割除了深深的峡谷以及裸露出地底矿产的裂缝。土地表层存在的最有价值的矿产之一就是铜矿。在19世纪晚期至20世纪初期，在世界其他地方开发出更有利可图的铜矿之前，亚利桑那州的铜矿提供了电器和电讯所需的大部分铜矿。这些矿产的周边一夜间涌现出大量的住房，以供给来挖掘这些蓝色矿产的工人们。

将铜矿提炼为光亮金属的过程中会产生许多极为有害的东西，包括毒性过滤池，为方便开采深处高纯矿藏而移除的大堆覆土、岩石和碎石，以及废弃熔炉（图11）。这些开采场大部分为露天开采，其废弃物破坏了大面积的景观，并在地上形成吞噬整座山乃至其所有城镇的一个个洞坑。20世纪末铜矿价格快速的跌落导致了大量的开采场倒闭，只留下了丑陋的景观和弃置的城镇。这些城镇中不少与其地形很好地融合在一起，成为有着由比例恰当之建筑围合而成的曾经繁华的主街道的美丽地方。

对于某些城镇， 其铜矿在市场中所占份额的锐减使得它们看不到任何未来发展的希望；其他城镇则迫切地寻找经济发展的替代方案，例如旅游或者户外休闲等产业。我们为

每一种类型提供一个案例：亚利桑那州的格伦博镇（Globe）：一个几乎重新被打造的小镇；亚利桑那州的克利夫顿镇（Clifton）：暴晒于沙漠中的烈日下，城中主要街道上几近无人。对于这两个案例的研究，我们主要参考了国会图书馆中的老照片和广泛的现场调研。

格伦博镇最初作为一个沿着皮纳尔河谷的采矿营地于1875年建立。与小镇毗邻的山区蕴藏着许多的铜矿，它们通过山谷平地中的铁道运往山下。一张由美国地质勘查局绘制于20世纪初的地形图展示了该镇的主要街道——布罗德大街，该街平行于河流与铁路的走向（图12）住房散布在山坡之上。格伦博镇布罗德大街一直是美国主街道建设的原型；宽阔的人行道以及街角处的停车场，连续且尺度适宜的街旁商店提供了所有的零售和商业服务，同时还有城镇日常生活必备的市政设施（图13-15）。沿着铜谷分布至布罗德山之上的铜矿与其下山谷中的城镇、溪流及铁路紧密联系在一起，这种关系曾导致格伦博镇商业区以及溪畔铁轨遭受洪灾。这张美国地质勘查局的地图显示的是铜矿开采剧增之前的格伦博镇状况：镇西山丘被整修为一系列巨大的露天矿区。

虽然格伦博镇是作为一个矿业小镇兴起的，它如今已经被改造为一个游客停留点，这些游客去往参观盐河峡谷之壮美风景，或通托国家森林及迷信山之震撼地形。不幸的是，如今格伦博镇中心老城区外的街道上产生了一些新式的汽车旅馆和快捷食物售卖处，这让那些老的商业中心的运营步履维艰。

被人遗忘的亚利桑那州克里夫顿镇坐落于世界上最大露天铜矿之一的下方。克里夫顿的主街道——铜矿大道沿着圣弗朗西斯科河的峡谷延伸，在两侧高耸的崖壁间与一条干涸的河床交织在一起。穿过河床，沿着冲积平原往上的是冶金厂以及其他矿石加工过程所需要的大型建筑。克利夫顿见证了太多：这座城镇选址地势险峻却也因此得到了美丽的景色，在这里一代又一代工人为铜矿开采而日夜辛苦地工作，还有美国劳工们为了薪水和安全保障的提升进行着徒劳的抗争。而挣扎之后所剩下的，是克里夫顿的孤单的街道，曾经的车水马龙早已不复存在，如今空荡荡的街道上放眼望去，只看到那些老式建筑的立面，被沙漠中的烈日暴晒成破败的暖赭色（图16）。

依据当地的传说，在19世纪中期，一个名叫蔡斯的首领带领军队穿过圣弗朗西斯科河（San Francisco River）的峡谷追击一群阿帕切族（Apache）的入侵者。他的两个骑兵，作为军队里的探矿人员，发现了峡谷崖壁上铜矿床的痕迹。追击阿帕切族人失败后，他们用木桩做下记号以便于日后返回勘探高品质的矿产。圣弗朗西斯科峡谷起初也曾十分美丽，四面都是陡壁，河流绕着一个个沙洲蜿蜒流动。杨树为人们提供荫蔽而草地则为疲惫的马匹提供饲料。该河两侧的高耸河岸毗邻狭窄的冲积沙洲，这种河岸存在于河谷全程，仅在一些由高处沙漠径流汇合而成的旱溪汇入处被打断。第一批勘探者将营地驻扎在自然的大陆架上，特别是在以蔡斯上尉命名的蔡斯河（Chase）与圣弗朗西斯河交汇处的那片宽阔平地上。 后来这些勘探者的定居点沿着河岸扩张，有的甚至以隧道的方式进入峡谷的岩壁。这种诗意却危险的定居方式最终预示了克里夫顿的未来。

一张于1900-1901年之间绘制的美国地质勘察队地图显示出克里夫顿以及与亚利桑那州和新墨西哥州联通的铁路线。这条线路沿着圣弗朗西斯科河谷底一直延伸到蔡斯河，最终到达莫雷西（Morenci）（图17）。这种精美历史地图上的等高线颜色被渲染成深棕色，与图底棕黄色背景形成反差，唤起对该地沙漠景观的想象。浅蓝色的圣弗朗西斯科河流看起来很平静，并不会造成危害。地图上被标识为“绿铜矿山”的山顶如今已经被削平了，代之以一个极为巨大的露天矿场。附近的莫雷西是一个为不属于工会的工人所建立的企业生活区，它随着露天矿坑的扩张，搬迁了若干次。

在一张1914年的桑伯恩公司关于克里夫顿的合成地图上，我们可以看到那些紧密聚集于峡谷底部的用以粉碎、熔化和提炼铜的复杂构筑物（图18）。这是在峭壁和河流间令人惊奇的高密度功能性建筑的集合组团。在封闭的峡谷中，噪音、气味和灰尘带来的消极影响会更加严重。尽管大部分集合组团在新道路建设中得以清除，但某些残留的部分依然存在，例如在桑伯恩公司地图上展示出几个矿仓以及一个3 500加仑（15.91m3）的水箱。这张2011年照片拍摄的正是这个位于石制矿仓背后的混凝土水箱（图19）。

更多的工业建筑位于蔡斯河的对岸。轨道从南部进入峡谷，在一片拓宽的冲积沙丘上设置了5条铁轨或者旁轨，用于停放向南开往联合太平洋铁路的运货车厢。随着开矿活动沿着河畔矿床深入山区，这些铁轨也继续顺蔡斯河而上。

铜矿大道(Copper Avenue)位于工业建筑对岸，平行于蔡斯河。铜矿大道是克里夫顿的中心，一条狭窄的街道被漂亮的砖和石制立面所围合（图20）。沿着1914年的铜矿大街行走，首先看见的是一个理发店，两个修鞋店铺，一个电影剧场，它的旁边搭建了杂耍歌舞表演舞台，保龄球场以及两个酒吧，其中的一个只为女性提供特有服务。穿越街道是几间饭馆以及另一个酒吧。 沿着大街架高的人行

道继续行走， 是更多的台球房，饭馆和酒吧。1914年的克里夫顿一定是一个令人兴奋的青楼风月之所。这条大街上的一个中国式洗衣店格外引人注目， 这证明了中国移民在当时已经来到了遥远的亚利桑那州。街上的肉店、面包店、家具陶器店和另一个电影剧场，以及啤酒点和杂货店共同构成了这个小型的商业中心。在街道的尽头，一个罗马天主教堂服务于当地从墨西哥移民到北部工作的人们。克里夫顿就像亚利桑那其他的矿区一样，教堂、饭馆、台球厅甚至是矿工的淋浴室都是分离的。沿铜矿大道向上走一截，位于中国洗衣店和教堂之间，有一个名为“洛奇大厅”的建筑，正位于一个肉类市场和仓库上方。试图在旷工中发挥影响的工会应该曾在这里开过会。

与其他城镇相比较，像格伦博和克里夫顿这样的单一资源型城镇，明显的体现出仅依靠单一采掘工业发展的脆弱性。这些城镇虽身处巨大的落基山脉中偏远之处，但完全受到其无法控制的全球化力量的摆布。伦敦的那间调整铜矿价格的交易所并不会在意克里夫顿的工人和他们的家人们。 矿业城镇只能伴随着矿石的生产而存在。没有任何一个城镇的发展可以脱离与产业兴盛相共生的关系。在这里生活的居民们没人任何争取生存的替代的选择，除非他们搬去另一个遥远的地方。

落基山脉之中也发展起了许多与采掘工业几乎没有关系的新城镇，例如科罗拉多州的韦尔镇（Vale）或者斯廷博特斯普林斯（Steam Boat Springs）等旅游胜地。这些小镇迎合了滑雪或徒步旅行等季节性娱乐活动的需求。在东部佛蒙特州和新罕布什尔州境内的阿帕拉契亚山脉中，一些类似度假胜地也很兴盛，不过它们并非由当地居民组成和管理的真正城镇。它们仅是为了旅游所开发的中转地或者季节性的到访地，游客都居住在其他地方。由于它们位置偏远，大都需要飞机或者汽车到达。它们的生存只能依靠那些有空闲时间并且能够支付得起费用的美国高薪阶层。

我们可从美国山区城镇中得到若干启示。依赖注入采矿等单一财富创造方式是有风险的。这种城镇与那些仅依赖农业或林业的群落类似，可被称之为经济型单种群落。类似生态型单种群落，单一资源依赖型城镇缺少弹性。该比喻可以更进一步，即如果某种疾病或寄生虫侵害了某自然系统中一个单种群落，那么整个系统将会崩溃。同样的，在矿区的城镇中，当煤炭或者铜矿等某种特定矿产的需求量降低，这些进行生产加工活动的城镇同样会面临崩溃。无论是煤炭还是铜矿开采的可持续性都是无法得到保证，最终是受全球经济所调控。

由于过度依赖于这种高风险的经济基础，那些非常偏远的山区城镇更容易濒临崩溃。一旦与矿产开采相关的工作消失，那些居民将没有选择，只能被迫移动到另一个遥远的地方去寻找新的工作机会。即使汽车提供了便利条件，但这样的距离对于人们日常往返还是过于远，这将导致更大区域范围内的诸多城镇走向崩溃。

美国的聚落形态正在改变， 从一个遍布小城镇的国土变作一个个不断扩张的大型都市区域。这种新的发展模式使美国文化趋向同质化，但也由于交通网络的联系，向人们提供了多层次的就业机会。具有讽刺意味的是，多样化的就业机会只能伴随着同质化物质环境的产生。

从这些山区城镇历史中可以学习的第二点是它们独特的，为呼应当地地理条件所展现出的城镇形态。它们是乡土构造的精美范例，具有区域多样性、环境创造性、以及在山区地理中适应性选址等特点。 在我们的建成环境因全球化压力而趋向实用主义同质化的背景下，当代设计师面临的一个挑战即是如何保持上述城市形态的多样性。

Two great mountain ranges bracket the North American continent(fig.1). In the east, the ancient Appalachians run northeastward paralleling the Atlantic coast for over a thousand miles from Georgia to Canada. Continental shifts formed the Appalachians long before the American continent took its final shape, so over eons of time, erosion has worn them down into steep but relatively low ranges of heavily forested mountains. Because the Appalachians blocked European exploration of the interior of the North American continent, their vastness greatly constricted the spread of settlements along their entire length. On the west, the newer geologically and much higher Rocky Mountains form a segment of an extensive northsouth chain of mountains that runs from Alaska in the far north, down across Canada and the United States, curves to form Central America and then stretches all the way to the very southern tip of South America, ending at the remote extension of Argentina, Tierra de Fuego the land of fire. As this great uplifted seam of cataclysmic geological ruptures crosses the United States, it widens into a series of intertwined ranges from the well-known Rockies in the east to the high Sierras and Cascades of California and Oregon in the west. The Rocky Mountains are a true cordillera from the Spanish word for braided rope many strands of individually named ranges spreading almost a thousand miles across. Besides the Rockies themselves, this cordilleraen compasses the deserts of the Great Basin of Nevada and Oregon. Like a braided rope, the several ends unraveled into other distinctive mountainous regions such as the Wasatch or the Bitter Root - names that resonate with the history of Native Americas and their resistance to European expansion.

Between these two mountain ranges, the Appalachians and the Rocky Mountains, lies one of the largest, flattest and most fertile regions of the world -the American Great Plains, drained by the mighty river systems of the Missouri and the Mississippi Rivers. The Great Plains are central to Americas history, for their agricultural wealth fueled this countries rapid expansion and meant that the two mountainous regions to either side of the continent did not have to be settled by Americans growing population except as necessary for mineral extraction. European Americans perceived both the Rocky Mountains and the Appalachians as impediments to be passed through on the way to other easier settled and more productive and flatter regions. As a result, settlements in Americans mountains tend to be isolated and closely associated with the extraction of minerals such as coal in the Appalachians or copper, gold or silver in the Rockies. These resource dependent towns, or as I will call them, single resource towns, arose, thrived, struggled and finally collapsed as their resource, their only source of wealth, either copper or coal, either prospered or floundered depending on market demands. Economic forces far beyond the towns, parochial existence determined their futures. Like most economic systems dependent on just one object of extraction, these regions have lost market share to cheaper mining operations in other parts of the world, to newer, more efficient transportation methods, or to cleaner, less polluting sources of energy. Consequently the mountainous regions of the United States are littered with many tiny forgotten towns, abandoned in the great game of global capitalism, cast aside in the most fragile of existence, places of beauty now empty of anything but poverty and nostalgia, left to slowly disappear into the past. This essay explores four of these neglected towns for what they can tell us about urban form and their precarious present within an uncertain future.

Resource dependent towns cluster around the deposits of the actual minerals their inhabitants are extracting, sometimes following a geological fault or seam across a valley or up a mountain. A deposit deep within the earth determines the towns placement. Because the placement and existence of each town depends solely on one mineral, towns succeed or fail as the demand for that mineral fluctuates on world markets. All towns in a larger area developed around similar mining economies fail together with no hope for any other alternative method of creating wealth. As we shall see, coal towns and copper towns, in their respective regions all collapse together making the struggle for their survival impossible. I call this the cascading effect, like the collapse of a house of cards. This cascading phenomenon is not limited to just mineral extraction and resource dependent towns, for America has many other examples of whole regional failures such as the eastern seaports, New England mill towns, and even agricultural towns of the Great Plains.

Many towns locked in the mountains of America will disappear. It is important, however, to study their urban form for what it tells us about our past and how it can help us as we imagine the future. As our settlement patterns become more and more homogenized, we should look to past examples that maintained their diversity of form even as today’s growing cities congregate in wider

and wider circles around our increasing centers of urbanization. To understand these small remote towns, it is first necessary to explain the idea of urban form - an illustrative and abstract concept that remains even as a town’s population drifts away to other places and its structures fall into neglect.

A town‘s urban form is made up of many distinct parts, each important but none as important as the whole, the complete complex of buildings, public and private spaces such as streets, trees, and the placement of the town within its contextual topography. We can all agree that New York City, its great skyscrapers and dense concentration, its grid of streets like canyons stretching north-south, east-west, is one of our most dramatic examples of urban form. From above or in the distance across the Hudson, New York’s urban form presents an iconic image of our ability to dwell together. Small towns, even tiny towns, too have their urban form. Towns maybe model our small experiments that often grew into larger compositions, but there are nevertheless wonderful examples of tiny concise urban compositions around the world. The many familiar and beautifully dense towns found in China’s Anhui Provence offer examples of such urban forms. Made up of easily aggregated units of housing, each with its own deep private courtyard, these Chinese towns exist as solids of urban form with only the tiniest slivers of public space, narrow alleys, carved from the block of buildings. I argue throughout my writings that urban compositions are a great art form and that towns and especially great cities are our most wonderful works of art.

The first decision that determines a town's urban form is its placement within its topography, its natural context. The placement of a town, its buildings and the lay-out of its street must respond to these topographic constraints. When building within mountainous environments, topography takes on even more importance. As we will see with the four examples of this essay, the towns of America's mountainous regions always occur along valleys, and as the natural drainage patterns too follow the bottom contours of the mountains, towns are placed on or around streams or rivers. While this placement seems obvious, it has several common ramifications such as disastrous and periodic flooding and extreme isolation within the larger geological regions. Valley placement always results in some type of clearly legible linear form, a gentle accommodation to topography with little or no manipulation of the earth. What manipulation does occur, and it is substantial indeed, is that required for the extraction of minerals. Ironically mountain towns themselves respond harmoniously to their topography while surrounded with some of the most disfigured and environmentally degraded environments found on earth. Over burden, slag heaps, leaching pools all condemn these towns and their dwindling populations to a polluted and hazardous environment that cannot be inhabited.

A town’s initial street layout must conform to topography. Ease of measurement on the ground made some form of adaptive grid ubiquitous in America. As most of these towns were initially served only by railroads, and as railroads followed the level contours along valley streams, towns located in mountains developed several forms reflective of the liner, or organic bends and curves of the shiny ribbons of steel track. As the only public spaces, the streets were contiguous with the railroad tracks, thus a street diagram is more than a traffic pattern; it is as well a diagram of pedestrian public space. Streets are rooms, with dimension of width and section enclosed by buildings and trees. Public space may be the most important component of urban form yet we seldom acknowledge our streets as spaces rather than parking and travel lanes. Small towns do not often have a manifestly obvious or distinguished public space (with the exception of America’s courthouse square towns), yet even in the tiniest town, streets are like stage sets where the most common of human activities take place in full view of all.

A town's architecture can be relatively anonymous, yet still perform a function of enclosure. Consistency of positioning, of setbacks and of height are most important when framing public space. Topographic placement, street spaces, building mass and architectural hierarchy together make urban form, yet it is the totality of all four elements that makes for beautiful examples of urban compositions. The four towns discussed in this article are not just echoes of their past, blank facades hiding hollow interiors inhabited only by owls-they are, or were, real places full of people’s hopes and dreams. We must judge them as art, defined by both form and content and for their ability to encapsulate those hopes and dreams. Form, be it two dimensional or three, painting, sculptural or urban, represents something deeper than just paint on a canvas or bricks and mortar. Towns stand for community, our willingness and need to dwell together. In this sense, towns are truly works of art, complex physical manifestations of an idea, and this idea cannot be separated from its form.

I have chosen four towns as examples of the

unique and distinctive urban form found in the mountainous regions of the United States. Two from the Appalachian Mountains, what are termed -coal towns- towns dependent entirely upon the mining and extraction of two types of coal, soft or bituminous coal and hard or anthracite coal. These different kinds of coal seams occur in two distinctly different regions of the Appalachian range. The third and fourth examples of mountain towns are from the western cordillera of the Rocky Mountains: copper mining towns on the edge of the Colorado Plateau in Arizona.

The mining of coal and railroads are link. Coal can only be brought to markets, especially those of great urban centers, by bulk transportation. Canals and barges were at first, only a temporary solution for canals freeze or flood rendering them seasonally unreliable. By the middle of the nineteenth century railroads soon became the most efficient and pragmatic means of moving large tonnages of coal from the Appalachian Mountains to the cities and towns along the eastern seaboard and out into the Great Plains to the west. And of course steam engines totally depend on coal for fuel. In the late nineteenth century, long trains of hopper cars loaded with coal snaked their way through the mountains and across the United States providing fuel for the trains themselves, for heating of homes and for power plants that generated the steam for electricity and for the steam power necessary to run the mills and factories of this country's expansion(fig.2).Railroads penetrated the mountains along stream beds, following the alluvial shelves and gentle gradients of streams and rivers that flowed east and west out of the mountains. Steam engines are wonderfully efficient machines, yet they had a very large number of moving parts that required constant maintenance by crews of workers. At any place along the winding tracks that threaded their way through the steep topography that afforded areas of flat land, the railroads established maintenance facilities, marshaling yards for storage of cars, and covered sheds for locomotive repair. These facilities were manned by workers who needed to live nearby with their families. Families required produce, schools, churches, civic structures, and housing, all the ingredients of a small town. So along these narrow alluvial flood plains deep within the mountains, an unusual urban form developed, what I call constellation towns, because their form that reaches out along narrow valleys reminds one of the starry tentacles from a whirling galaxy far distant in the night sky. Welch, West Virginia, is such a town.

Welch is located deep within the Appalachian Mountains at the confluence of two small streams. Two major railroad tracks converge at Welch before following the narrow valleys up into the coal fields. Coal mining in the Appalachians in the nineteenth century-as opposed to today-was mostly drift mines, vertical and horizontal shafts penetrating into folded coal seams on the steep slopes high in the mountains(fig.3).Coal was brought to the surface at a structure called a tipple, then dropped down into waiting hopper cars for the long journey down and out of the mountains. The movement of bulk coal took advantage of the efficiency of gravity, following the line of least resistance downhill from the mine to the lower and flatter elevations.

A condensed and abridged map of Welch illustrates the many winding neighborhoods of its housing that follow the tracks that follow the stream beds(fig.4).Welch's center occupies the larger alluvial shelf in the middle of the settlement accommodating several railroad maintenance sheds and a small commercial center. A school is located in a neighboring valley on another flat area while the houses and dwellings climb other valleys away from the center. It is a wonderfully adaptive urban form, responsive to the contours and to the tracks.

A photograph by Russell Lee found in the National Archives shows the main street of Welch on a Saturday afternoon on August 24, 1946(fig.5). It is a dense urban street with lots of activity including automobile traffic and pedestrians on the sidewalks. Movie theaters are located on both sides with other stores along the entire street. As the street recedes into the distance, one sees the steep mountain backdrop at its end. Today the traffic is gone from Welch streets, the theaters closed, the stores and restaurants empty (fig.6).Welch struggles to maintain some sort of economic base even though its many beautiful buildings remain(fig.7).

North of West Virginia, in Pennsylvania, the Appalachian Mountains make a sharp bend eastward, deformed in a mighty collision of tectonic plates. This area is the anthracite coal region. Anthracite is a harder coal that burns hotter and with less smoke than the bituminous coal of West Virginia. The valleys of the anthracite coal region are straighter enclosed by extended ridges giving rise to another kind of urban form in its communities: linear towns of uniform rows of structures that line the bottom of valleys. Unlike the twisting tentacles of Welch, a representative example of one of these anthracite towns, Lansford, Pennsylvania, consists of five long parallel streets locked tightly in a valley(fig. 8).Great

heaps of coal slag, the left over material from mining operations punctuate the town’s ends. To maximize the number of dwellings within the valley, the parallel streets are lined with row houses, two story, single family dwellings often joined together with party walls, each having a front porch and a tiny backyard(fig.9).Because the coal company owned all land outside the town’s boundaries, Lansford has no sprawl, no gas stations or big box stores outside its tightly confined limits. One enters the town abruptly, traverses the long main street and exits just as dramatically into the mountains. Several blocks of one area of the five parallel streets developed as a commercial strip with stores and civic buildings. Churches are set on side streets with their own open spaces within the tight linear blocks(fig.10).It is a very dramatic urban composition unlike any other in America; one that would be highly desirable were it located anywhere near a major metropolitan area. Sadly the young people of Lansford have slowly left in search of jobs in the burgeoning metropolitan areas growing around expanding cities. The increasingly elderly population that remains cannot sustain Lansford, and the town, like so many others in the anthracite region, loses its economic vitality.

The third example of a mountain town in this essay exists 2000 miles west on the edge of the Colorado Plateau, the great plug of uplifted land that spreads over four states: Arizona, Utah, Colorado and New Mexico. The Colorado Plateau sits within the braided strands of the cordillera of the Rocky Mountains, between the Wasatch Range and the Sangre de Christo Mountains. The uniform surface of the Colorado Plateau holds more National Parks, including the Grand Canyon, than any other geological feature in the United States. Water erosion has sculpted the plateau over eons forming some of the most unique landscapes in the world. Alone its southern edge, known as the Mogollon Rim, that runs across Arizona, water has carved deep canyons and fissures exposing mineral deposits once buried within the earth. One of the most valuable deposits lying close to the earth’s surface is copper ore. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, before other more profitable copper deposits were developed in other parts of the world, Arizona’s copper mines supplied most of the copper needed for the expanding market of electrical appliances and communications. Towns sprang up overnight around these mines to house the workers required to dig the blue ore from the earth.

The process of refining copper ore into bright metal leaves many extremely harmful from toxic leaching ponds to vast piles of overburden, rock and gravel removed to enable access to the purer ore beneath, and abandoned smelters(fig.11). Many of these mines are open pit mines whose expanding debris spreads ominously across the landscape, great holes in the earth that swallow whole mountains and even towns. The price of copper dropped precipitously in the late twentieth century so mines have closed leaving behind scared landscapes and derelict towns. Many of these towns are dramatically situated within their topography, places of great beauty with once thriving main streets enclosed by well-proportioned architecture.

For some towns, the collapse of copper shares slowly forecloses any future; others turn desperately to economic alternatives such as tourism and outdoor recreational opportunities. We turn to an example of each: Globe, Arizona, as a possible re-invention and to Clifton, Arizona, whose main street lies empty in the desert sun. In both cases, our investigations and reconstructions depend heavily on old maps from the Library of Congress as well as extensive site visits.

Globe was founded in 1875 as a mining camp situated along the valley of Pinal Creek. The hills above the town once supported many copper mines whose ore traveled downhill to a railroad along the valley floor. A United States Geological Survey (USGS) topography map from the early twentieth century shows the linear quality of the town’s main thoroughfare, Broad Street, paralleling the river and the railroad(fig.12).Housing spreads up the hillsides. Globe’s Broad Street was, and still is, the archetypal American main street: wide pavement with angle parking, continuous well-scaled store fronts tightly grouped together that once provided all retail and commercial services and civic institutions necessary for the town’s daily existence(fig.13-15). The copper mines climbed Block Mountain along the aptly named Copper Gulch, with the town, creek and railroad intertwined in the valley below, a relationship that has caused disastrous flooding of Globe’s business district as well as the tracks along the banks of the creek. The USGS map shows Globe just before copper mining greatly increased, re-contouring the hills west of Globe into vast open-pit mines.

While Globe began as a mining town, it has reinvented itself as a stopping place for tourists heading into the spectacular scenery of the Salt River Canyon or the dramatic topography of the Tonto National Forest and the Superstition Mountains. Unfortunately today the main road by-

passes Globe’s downtown, generating a competing strip of newer motels and fast food eateries outside the historic center, leaving the older businesses struggling.

The forgotten town of Clifton, Arizona, sits just below one of the largest open-pit copper mines in the world. Following a canyon of the San Francisco River, Clifton’s main street, Copper Avenue, twists up a dry wash or empty stream bed between high cliffs on either side. Across the stream and strung along alluvial shelves are the smelters and other large buildings required in the processing of the ore. Clifton is the specter of many things: its perilously beautiful location, the tight symbiotic relationship between generations of workers and copper processing, and the futile struggle of America’s laborers to wrench decent wages and safety improvements from corporate control. All that remains of this struggle is Clifton's single street, once full of cars and activity, now enclosed by empty facades colored warm ochre by the desert sun(fig.16).

According to local legend, in the midnineteenth century, a Captain Chase pursued a band of Apache raiders through the canyons of the San Francisco River. Two of his troopers, soldier-prospectors, noticed evidence of copper deposits on the canyon's rock walls. Having failed to capture the Apaches, they instead staked claims and later returned to prospect and mine the high grade ore. The San Francisco canyon must have originally been beautiful; enclosed by steep walls on all sides, the river itself was a wide meandering stream twisting through russet sand bars. Cottonwood trees would have provided welcome shade and grass fodder for tired horses. The river ran between high banks that edge narrow alluvial shelves the length of the canyon, except where tributary creeks, dry most of the year, joined with run-off from the desert above. The first prospectors would have camped on these natural shelves, especially the broad flat land where Chase Creek, named for Captain Chase, joins the San Francisco River. Subsequent settlements expanded along these banks right up to and sometimes even tunneling into the canyon's rock walls. This idyllic yet precarious settlement pattern would ultimately seal the fate of Clifton.

A United States Geological Survey (USGS) map drawn in 1900-1901 shows Clifton and its railroad to the Arizona and New Mexico, molded into the canyon floor along the San Francisco River and stretching up Chase Creek towards Morenci(fig.17). The colors of this beautiful historic map's contour lines are rendered sepia against a warm tan background to evoke the desert landscape. The soft blue color of the San Francisco River seems peaceful and unthreatening. Today the entire mountaintop labeled Spring Copper Mt on the map is gone, removed and replaced instead by a gigantic open pit mine. Nearby Morenci is a company town that existed for non-union mine workers; it has since been relocated several times as the great pit expands.

A composite Sanborn map of Clifton from 1914 shows the complex structures for crushing, smelting and refining copper tightly group on the canyon floor(fig.18).It is an amazingly dense cluster of utilitarian buildings perched between the cliffs and the river. The noise, smell and dust must have been overwhelming in the close confines of the canyon. Although most of this complex has been erased by the improvement to a new road, vestiges remain: ore bins and a 3500 gallon water tank shown on the Sanborn map still exist. A photograph taken in 2011 shows this same concrete tank behind the stone ore bins(fig.19).

More industrial buildings were across Chase Creek. Tracks came into the canyon from the south, and on a broadening of the shelf along the river, space was made for five tracks or sidings for storage of freight cars traveling south to the main Union Pacific line. These same tracks continued in the other direction up Chase Creek as the main mining activities followed the ore deposit along the stream to the mountain beyond.

Copper Avenue parallels Chase Creek on the other side opposite the industrial buildings. Copper Avenue was the center of Clifton, a narrow street enclosed by beautiful brick and stone facades(fig.20).Walking up Copper Avenue in 1914, one would have encountered first a barber shop, two cobblers, a movie pictures theater with a stage next door for traveling vaudeville, bowling alleys, two saloons with one noted as female boarding. Across the street were several restaurants and yet another saloon. Continuing up the street with its high sidewalks, were more pool halls, restaurants and saloons. Clifton must have been an exciting bawdy place in 1914. Remarkably, there was a Chinese laundry on Cooper Avenue, indicating that Chinese immigrants had come to remotest Arizona. Meat stores, bakeries, furniture and crockery and another movie pictures theater, beer and groceries complete this small commercial center. At the end of the street, the Roman Catholic Church clearly noted in parentheses as Mexican, obviously served a congregation of Mexican miners who migrated

north for work. In Clifton as in all Arizona mining communities, churches, restaurants, pool halls, even the miners' showers were segregated. Part way up Copper Avenue, between the Chinese laundry and the church, is a building marked Lodge Hall, above a meat market and storage. Trade unions attempting to gain a foot hold in the mining work force would have met here.

By comparison with other towns, singleresource towns like Globe and Clifton emphasize the fragility of a dependency upon one extractive industry. Remote as these towns are in the vastness of the Rocky Mountains, they are completely at the mercy of global forces far beyond their control. The price of copper is set in board rooms in London with no regard for Clifton's workers or their families. Mining towns exit only as long as the mine operates. None can escape their tight symbiotic relationship with the success and failure of an industry, a single extractive process. The inhabitants have no alternative possibilities for earning a living except to move far away to another location.

There are newer towns being developed in the Rocky Mountains that have little to do with an extractive industry: resort towns like Vale or Steam Boat Springs, Colorado. These towns cater to season recreational activities such as skiing or hiking. In the east, in the Appalachian Mountains in Vermont and New Hampshire similar resort communities thrive, but these are not real towns, incorporated and administered by the inhabitants. Rather they are recreational complexes developed for transient or seasonal visitors who live elsewhere. Because of their remoteness, most require plane and automobile access. All rely on a narrow economic and social strata of Americans, those who can afford both the leisure and the expense of extended vacations.

The lessons to be learned from towns within the mountains of the United States are several. Dependency upon a single method of creating wealth such as mineral extraction carries risks. Such towns are like agricultural or forest monocultures: one could term them economic monocultures. Like an ecological mono-culture, there is no resiliency built into single resource dependent towns. To take the analogy further, if a determined disease or parasite strikes a natural system's monoculture, the entire system collapses. Likewise with all towns in a mining region, when demand for a specific mineral, be it coal or copper, declines, the towns serving that process also collapse. There is nothing locally sustaining about either coal or copper extraction-both can only be supported by demand far removed in a global economy.

Coupled with this risky economic basis, the very remoteness of mountain towns makes them even more susceptible to failure. Once jobs associated with the primary extractive process disappear, the inhabitants have no choice but to move to another, usually far distant region to seek work. Even with the mobility afforded by automobiles, the distances are too great for people to dwell locally yet commute to far off work. This remoteness exacerbates the tendency towards the greater regional collapse of towns.

The settlement patterns of America are changing from a country of small towns to one of ever expanding metropolitan developments reaching outwards from our major cities. This new paradigm homogenizes American culture, but also provides multiple layers of job opportunities with interconnected transportation networks. Diversity of opportunities ironically couples with an increasingly homogenized physical environment.

A second and contrasting lesson to be learned from the history of these mountain towns is their unique and topographically responsive urban form. They are beautiful examples of vernacular compositions: regionally diverse, environmentally inventive and wonderfully accommodating to their placement within a mountainous geography. A challenge for today's designers is how does one maintain such authentic diversity of urban forms in the face of global pressures towards the pragmatic homogenization of our build environments.

Memory Structures the Present: Urban Form in Four Mountain Towns

Text: Jack Williams
Translator: ZHANG Shi-yang
Proofreading: WANG Ming-rui

The United States contains two mountain ranges: the Appalachians in the east and the great Rocky Mountain cordillera in the west. Small towns associated with mineral or coal extraction once populated distinctive regions of each range. As world demand for copper and coal dramatically decreased, the populations of these towns moved away and the towns’ economic vitality slowly collapsed. Left behind are some of the most unique urban forms in America worthy of detailed study for their beautiful adaption to topography and transportation networks.

Urban form; Resource dependent towns;Topographic accommodations;Vernacular architecture and design; Coal towns;Copper towns;Railroad towns; Rocky Mountains;Appalachian Mountains

TU986

A

1673-1530（2016）06-0050-14

10.14085/j.fjyl.2016.06.0050.14

2016-04-25

杰克.G.威廉姆斯/奥本大学建筑学院名誉教授

Author:

Jack G. Williams is Professor Emeritus at School of Architecture, Auburn University

译者简介：

张诗阳/1990年生/男/博士生/北京林业大学园林学院（北京 100083）

Translator:

ZHANG Shi-yang, who was born in 1990, is a PHD student in School of Landscape Architecture, Beijing Forestry University.

修回日期：2016-05-29