DESIGNING BLACK ROCK CITY
Origins
The historic origins of Black Rock City and the functional requirements that have conditioned its design begin with a series of simple plans we used pre-1997. The original form of the city was a circle. This was not planned, but was produced by an instinctive urge to round the wagons in the nearly boundless space of the Black Rock Desert. Later, four avenues were added to the circle to indicate the cardinal directions. This was done for very practical reasons. Not only was it difficult to find our modest settlement, but also people exiting our village frequently got lost or mired on the margins of the playa. Compass headings added to the circle served our need to orient ourselves in relation to the stark emptiness, which surrounded our site.
At the urging of founder and director Larry Harvey, this circle of camps gradually developed into a civic hub that centralized city services, provided a social gathering place, and created a prominent landmark. By 1996, a second circle called Ring Road surrounded this civic center, and a no camping zone called No Man's Land was established in front of our settlement. This was created to preserve the view of Burning Man. It opened outward from our civic plaza at about a 60-degree angle, much as the feature called the Keyhole does today, and extended to a point beyond the Man.
Changes
In 1997 we made our one-time venture off the playa into nearby Hualipai Valley in Washoe County, and Rod Garrett, later to become our city designer, was recruited to create plans in compliance with County regulations. This began the two-year process of developing the basic scheme from which our present city has grown.
This site established an external boundary for us. Thick brush and a long irrigation trench bordered the back of the city, fence lines protected our settlement's flanks, and an impassible isolated playa bordered its front. These natural barriers made it possible to create a secure entry point, a 'gate', for the first time.
In order to avoid the costly permits required for use of the adjoining Federal land, we were compelled to build the city on a strip of private land between a zigzagging property line and the narrow shoreline of Hualipai playa. This constrained us to an ungainly arc, which spread out laterally from the civic center. That happenstance form, however, contained a precursory hint of our later development.
New Beginnings
In 1997, we had been forced to work completely within the limitations of site, but in 1998 we returned to the blank canvas of the Black Rock Desert. Our new plans were strongly affected by our experience of the previous year. They were also conditioned by our desire to create population densities that would lead to social interactions. We were motivated by the example of 1996 and the disastrous consequences of unchecked urban sprawl. Another goal was to express and abet a sense of communal belonging. We were attempting to recreate some of the intimacy of our original camping circle, but on a much larger civic scale.
We now arranged the city around a geographic center formed by the location of the Burning Man. This position functioned like the fixed point of a drawing compass. From this spot our builders could survey the arc that defined the curve of Black Rock City's concentric streets. These streets formed less than half a circle and were sub-divided into blocks by a series of radial streets, like spokes projecting outward from the hub of an enormous wheel. The large figure of the Man became a unique identifier of one's position by providing all with a visual bearing at every intersection. Black Rock City, as it seemed, was in orbit around him. In moving the Man to this position, we had created an environment in which it felt as if each participant was co-related while united by some transcendent principal.
Design Factors
Except for this qualitative leap of development in 1998, the current form of our city has resulted from the continuous interplay of many factors: historic circumstance, public safety concerns, logistical needs, environmental conditions, politics, social ideals, economic viability, competing or potentiallyconflicting uses of space within our community, aesthetic perceptions and a need for a kind of spiritual symbolism, and, of course, our own individual inspirations in responding to this complex of concerns. Rod Garrett has functioned as our head designer, and Burning Man's chief organizers, representing various departments, have made several significant contributions to this scheme. In other words, much of the evolution of Black Rock City has proceeded exactly as would the development of any other city.
We began zoning space within our city in 1997 because of the need to locate theme camps in some coherent way. Since then we have gone on to designate various special areas, such as Walk-in camping, our airport, DPW and law enforcement headquarters, and large-scale sound installations at the ends of the city. Various issues caused us to create a zone behind the Man and beyond the arc of Black Rock City that is reserved for theme-related art installations. As our plan has grown, we have learned how to differentiate and separate various specialized, and potentially conflicting uses. This very much involves an empiricalstudy of our social needs as they've naturally emerged from an increasingly sophisticated social reality.
The site of our city has been largely determined by political considerations, plus health and safety concerns. During the early 90's Black Rock City had been deliberately hidden in the desert vastness. Participants were directed to a station called the gate, and here they were provided with coordinates by which they might locate our settlement. As attendance increased, however, it became apparent that large numbers of vehicles could not safely traverse this space. Frequent whiteouts, occasional drenching thunderstorms and the tendency of drivers to accelerate to unsafe speeds in trackless space dictated a location closer to the county highway. Accordingly, in 1998, we sited Black Rock City near the southern end of the Black Rock Desert a few miles outside the town of Gerlach. The subsequent move to our current location in 2000 was made possible when the Bureau of Land Management constructed a new access road near that year's event site. This access point was designed to avoid interference with other points of public access. The exact placement of the city was determined by a complex negotiation with the BLM, which resulted in an event location that did not interfere with the needs of other recreational land users.
Additionally, there were unresolved factors of security. The pentagram that marks our city's external boundary was dictated by (a) the need to minimize our footprint in the surrounding environment due to the concerns of other recreational land users, (b) the economic need to create one controllable entry point at which we could charge an entrance fee (sorely lacking until '97) and (c) the need to protect our community from the depredations of rogue vehicles. The most efficient and obvious solution was a circle, but that was unworkable in that it lacked straight lines of sight for security. A triangle or square, while requiring the minimum number of vantages for sight lines, enclosed too much unutilized space in its corners and presented too large a perimeter. Six sides required too many security vantage points, so the present shape was the sole option.
Above all, this city needed to work. It was vital that the flow of people and supplies in, out and within were unimpeded. Our design had to provide for basic services. The layout needed to be easily comprehended and negotiated without disorientation. It should also incorporate any familiar features of the previous event sites, and it needed to be scalable for future expansion. The five circumferential streets created in 1997 have now grown to thirteen, and the arc of our city, originally less than half, now extends two thirds of a circle around the Man. A city designed to accommodate 9,000 participants in 1998 has developed a capacity of well over 48,000 in ten years.
Graphic by Rod Garrett
Aesthetics
Aesthetics were not actually a design criterion, but were born out of the process. We found we could often judge the practicality of a solution by whether it added to the geometry. Given the road in and the Man's location, the city's bi-lateral symmetry provided optimum distribution for vehicular traffic. Even the angles and distances took on significance; the divisions of space were comprised of either round numbered radii or 15° angles, true North ended up 45° off the city's main axis, and so forth.
As previously mentioned, theme related artwork was placed in a zone beyond the precincts of our city. This was meant to lure participants away from our settlement and into the open space. Similarly, the open side to the circular scheme of the city takes on spiritual and psychological importance. Instead of completely circling the wagons, we invite the natural world to intrude. Rather than looking across our claimed tract to see only more settlement on the other side, our vision is spilled outward into the vastness of the greater Black Rock Desert. With this reminder of the infinite we hoped to evoke a connection between the small world we created and the fathomless universe we live in.
Summary
This city of the Burning Man continues to grow in size, and though it develops more each year, our plan of 1998 remains its basic framework. This plan referenced ancient megalithic sites and city-states, as well as various Renaissance and contemporary planning concepts. However, while there may be similarities between this and some current idealized and utopian cities, Black Rock City has a home, a storied history, and a culture ready to inhabit it, albeit fleetingly. It is a very real and yet extremely ephemeral phenomenon, as it must annually arise from nothing, flourish for a week, and then disappear entirely. 
