horizonr

New Yorbanism

Oh, alright, so maybe not every New Urbanist is a parsimonious, fearmongering, paternalistic prig.

But it's fair to say that what's gone wrong with New York's architecture and urban development over the last 30 years has a lot to do with the ascendancy of New Urbanist thinking in the City's planning, political, and media establishments — a traditionalist mindset that began to take hold in New York in the 1980s, well before anyone formulated these ideas into an ideology; came into its own in the 1990s, under Rudolph Giuliani; and now is coming home to roost in large-scale projects from ground zero to Atlantic Yards.

It's true that any number of the planners, critics, and
urban advocacy groups who shape political and public opinion about New York's built environment haven't signed the New Urbanist charter and would never introduce themselves that way at a cocktail party.

They are nonetheless functionally New Urbanist, to the extent that they tend to place ultimate faith in the street grid; profess to favor small buildings over large ones; given the choice, would prefer a classical or "vernacular" building
to a contemporary one; and are prepared to sacrifice urban vitality to get these things.

But solving New York's Architecture Problem is not simply a matter of "outing" New Urbanists in High Places (although that’s probably not a bad place to start). There are other players, too.

Joining New York's "professional urbanist" class are
(1) inveterate Not-In-My-Back-Yard-ists working to make sure that nothing modern or large or even remotely tall
gets built in "back yards" across the City; (2) the most
Big Developer-coddling City Hall and City Council in recent memory; and, of course, (3) the Big Developers themselves — three constituencies that couldn't care less about anyone's charter or theory but their own.

Together, all of these forces — sometimes working independently, sometimes forging small alliances — have created in New York a mutant strain of Modernist-inflected New Urbanism that is less an agenda than a condition, a
word that perfectly registers the sense of a sickness.

I call it New Yorbanism.

Many will tell you that what I call New Yorbanism is really
the long-expected Second Coming of Jane Jacobs — the 21st-century reclamation of the Prodigal Daughter of New York Urbanism. New Urbanist, NIMBYist, and Big Developer-ist actors, each starring in the title role of guess who, strut the stage of New York planning and architecture wearing a thick pancake maquillage of Jane, performing endless variations on the same well-rehearsed soliloquy: "Jane Jacobs is New York. I am Jane Jacobs. I am New York."

But neither of the impulses that feed the New Yorbanist condition has anything to do with Jane Jacobs. Line up a New Urbanist, a NIMBYist, and a Big Developer-ist alongside the irrespressible Jane, and it's very clear which of these things
is not like the other.

Which begs the question: Where, now, does Jane Jacobs
end and New York begin?

Farce in 1'52"

This fall, Larry Silverstein hired Giroud Pichot, a small architectural animation firm, to create what amounts to a high-end commercial for his latest efforts. This seductive little movie has been out there for several weeks now. If you've already seen it, have another look after this review. If not, consider this the set-up. Movie to follow.

In September 2001, just nine days after 9/11, Larry Silverstein declared his intention to build 4 or 5 buildings of 50-60 stories on the World Trade Center site. Ever since practically the whole world rejected Silverstein's plan in July 2002, he and the rebuilding authorities have been desperate.

Desperate for enough of the right people to believe that
they — Silverstein and the authorities — were taking the next World Trade Center in a new and better direction. And desperate for these same people to believe this Fiction of the New fervently enough to make them forget the original.

Using a calculated rhetoric of images and words, Silverstein and the authorities have continued to adorn their Emperor with more and more and more elaborate new clothes, to the point that many people — far too many — are not able
to recognize that the Emperor is every bit as naked as before.

Indeed, most of New York's politicians and virtually all of the national news media — starting with The New York Times — have long since climbed up on the Emperor’s float and, even now, are waving to the crowd from on high. Whether out of genuine enthusiasm or self-deludedly hopeful exhaustion, much of the crowd is waving right back.

It's been quite a parade.

The organizing idea for this campaign has been a
little something called "the Libeskind vision." Now,
Larry Silverstein has coopted three more architects — Norman Foster, Richard Rogers, and Fumihiko Maki —
to help sell this vision.

But this, unveiled in September 2006...

...is the same as this, unveiled in July 2002, more than two months before Daniel Libeskind was even on the scene.

Karl Marx famously said something to the effect that "history repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce." The problem with farce is that the less obvious it is — the more it seems to resemble straight-up Shakespearean comedy — the longer it takes the masses to realize that there's something insidious going on.

And who wants to think hard thoughts, anyway, when
they could be clapping along to a good song and dance at
the Emperor's parade?

If you've ever read Aldous Huxley, you know that this was the crux of his warning: For once society starts believing the burlesque, it risks laughing itself all the way over the precipice and down, down, down into the Brave New World below. And once that happens, it's all over.

Think I'm kidding? Watch this movie. It's a cautionary reminder of the lengths to which desperation will go — especially when it's armed with a big checkbook.

Enjoy it if you must. Replay it a few times. Just don't
be seduced by the spectacle: The prim, slim, elongated, slightly chilly, high-heels femininity of the towers in this animation is an utter fantasy.

Absent the George Gershwin and Kander & Ebb soundtrack — deployed here to render the proposed plan as a kind of sunny, Jazz Age confection — the hyper-congested, light-starved, streets-and-sidewalks reality produced by the bulky corporate monoliths that would actually get built under this plan would not be the charm this movie promises. It would be a curse.

There have been plenty of machinations at ground zero
these five years.

This movie is the the most dangerous piece of
propaganda yet.

comments john@johnlumea.com

Of Streets and Superblocks (Postscript to The Kinks)

Photo by Peter Page, 1985.

Is an argument against streets at the next World
Trade Center an argument against streets in general?

No. It is a critique of the New Urbanist planning dogma
that streets —€” and, in New York, the street grid —€” is in
every case the right answer and superblocks in every case the wrong one.

And it is an indictment of those pro-street New York City planning groups who, in the wake of 9/11, sold the public a bill of goods; who misled their captive audiences into believing there was but one kind of superblock —€” the long-demonized "World Trade Center superblock"; and who used that reductio ad absurdum both to mobilize the public and the news media in favor of streets and to (thus) narrow the possible futures for the next World Trade Center.