Tokyo, 2010 | Photos by Vishaan Chakrabarti

This, my tenth and final entry for a Country of Cities on Urban Omnibus, is in essence a highly personal love letter to Japan. For over a year, the wonderful readers of the Omnibus have cheered and jeered as I have relentlessly argued that the United States faces a series of deeply connected challenges: economic decline, energy dependence, oil wars, terrorism, xenophobia, protectionism, mounting debt, and spiraling health care costs. These challenges, while vexing when taken together, are surmountable with the silver bullet of the city. The combined growth of the skyscraper and the subway, I continue to posit, is the best path to keep our nation and our developing planet economically, environmentally, and socially sustainable. The recent catastrophe in Japan has shaken me into remembering, however, that the real trailblazers in truly dense urban living have been the Japanese, for which they have largely prospered, and because of which they will overcome the unthinkable triple tragedy they now face.

Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park, 2010, during the annual ceremony marking the anniversary of the atomic bombing | AFP/ Getty Images / Kazuhiro Nogi

Twenty years ago this August, a group of us went to Japan as graduate students fresh from two months of study in China (where skyscrapers were under construction on the then dirt roads of Shenzen, next to its new train station). I was enthralled by and enamored of a Japan whose towers and trains redefined the West as the underdeveloped world. We rode Tokyo’s surface rail for two days before realizing we hadn’t even been on the subway system yet. Knowing my time in Japan was limited, my father gave me the lifelong gift of a two-week rail pass on the Shinkansen, the world’s first bullet train, which unbelievably had opened in 1964. August 6th would be the anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bomb in Hiroshima, and we were inspired to see a memorial service that included the coming together of school children from all over the country. Every hotel in Hiroshima was booked, but we discovered that the bullet train made the journey from a distant farming village with an inexpensive, immaculate ryokan in mere minutes. To witness the service was a privilege, as we three were the only gaijin in sight in Hiroshima’s Peace Memorial Park that morning. At 8:16am, the time of the bombing, thousands around us young and old dropped to the ground, essentially playing dead. The city went silent. An ambulance wailed in the distance. Minutes passed like hours, drums started to beat, the people rose from the sidewalks and went about their day, as we, dazed, found ourselves wandering shopping streets replete with American flags and statuettes of Liberty. We would go on to Kyoto, Nara, Osaka, and ultimately, with a larger group from MIT, to Tokyo to study the densification of Marunouchi.

The lessons from that trip — the lessons of atrocity morphed into forgiveness, of farm juxtaposed with city, of park transformed to memorial, of verticality imbued with life, of hyper-density enabled by hyper-infrastructure, and ultimately of adversity repurposed for prosperity — would go on to color all that I know and feel about cities, all that I have advocated on these pages, and all that would form my own approach to the memorial at the World Trade Center, to the High Line, to the Hudson Yards and #7 line, and now to both of my ongoing professional passions, urban development pedagogy and the rebuilding of Pennsylvania Station.

Recently and on short notice, I was asked to be the host for a Columbia conference on building technology in Tokyo. Remarkably, because of the tightness of the schedule, I was afforded a helicopter ride from distant Narita Airport to the top of a skyscraper near the conference. During that heavenly twenty-minute joyride I sat gobsmacked by a Tokyo transformed. Twenty years earlier, while smaller towers abounded, skyscrapers were still a controversy, but today they define the morphology of the city. As so exquisitely described in Ian Buruma’s recent article for the Wall Street Journal, the permanence of skyscrapers is a relatively new development in a country so susceptible to natural disaster. Buruma points to traditional construction of wood and paper, and of course to the periodic twenty-year reconstruction of the Ise shrine, as embodying the premise that for Japanese architecture, “the only permanence is its impermanence.”

Farmland, Japan, 2010 | Photo by Vishaan Chakrabarti

Yet, in a mountainous country the approximate size of California but with the arable land area only twice the size of Massachusetts, Japan houses some 127 million people in a condition that is roughly ten times denser than the United States. In this situation, skyscrapers became inevitable given Japan’s prowess in manufacturing, shipping, information technology, financial services and the arts. Beyond economic rationale, however, density is a way of life in Japan. It is commonplace to find a bar on the eighth floor of a sliver building. In farming communities, freed from the moralizing madness of the Jeffersonian grid, housing is clustered together into tight communities with crop fields dispersed on the perimeter. Urbane society is the glue that holds the entire nation together.

And today, it is that glue that we are witnessing. In their fine nightly reporting, Anderson Cooper, Sanjay Gupta and Soledad O’Brien continually comment on the civility with which the populace responds to water running out at shelters, or long waits for transport, or caring for the elderly. To be sure, this civility can also be linked to an unwillingness to confront bad news at the institutional level, as witnessed by baffling statements from the government, by obfuscation from Tokyo Electric Power, and by the general bureaucratic malaise that has stagnated Japan’s economy for well over a decade.

But it is at the individual level that we will witness the rebirth of a nation. It is individual workers who hopefully will return power to the cooling systems at Fukushima Daiichi. It is individuals who will rebuild the coastline, the retirement communities, and the country’s sense of self-confidence and pride.

To be sure, we should pause to give the Japanese, particularly their architects and engineers, some praise in this calamity. For all the failures of seawalls and power plants, little is said about the fact that most engineered buildings seem to have withstood the massive temblor and tsunami. With some of the strictest building codes in the world, Japanese skyscrapers were not weaponized in this disaster. Astonishing video of Tokyo skyscrapers swaying “like trees in the breeze,” as one onlooker noted, did their job by swaying as designed. In the extraordinary before-after photos of Sendai airport, amidst the flood damage, it is remarkable to see the air traffic control tower and terminal still standing. One can only hope our cities can boast the same in a similar consequence.

Sendai Airport Terminal after the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami | Top: Roberto De Vido, Yokosuka, Japan. Bottom: AFP/HO/NHK

It is natural, in the face of this tragedy, to question density and infrastructure. After all, it is one thing to see the horror of earthquakes and tsunamis ravage largely rural nations, yet it is another to see them ravage a nation that in many ways is more technologically advanced than our own. But it is critical to remember that Tokyo rebuilt after both a major earthquake in 1923 and the bombings of World War II. New York is rebuilding after 9/11. Beirut has rebuilt a stunning city on the Mediterranean. Bahrain will hopefully someday rebuild Pearl Square. In their excellent book The Resilient City, Campanella and Vale reveal the capacity of dense modern cities to rebuild.

Density has served Japan well and will continue to do so. One could argue that if their population were spread out, fewer would be susceptible to disaster. Similar arguments were waged during the Cold War in the US, when the Federal government subsidized the sprawling girth of the American middle class to flee both the arms race and race riots. But, as I have attempted to illuminate in these pages, spreading out only leads to oil dependence and further environmental degradation, which in turn leads to sea level rise and fiercer storm surges.

Admittedly, the alternative of densification leaves many questions unanswered. Cities may use less petrol per person, but they require vast amounts of electricity that must be generated efficiently, and with the advent of electric buses and taxis, this demand will only grow. Many hoped that nuclear energy was a partial solution, or at least a bridge to truly renewable energy, but this is an assertion that must be fully scrutinized, with the question of how to store spent fuel again at the forefront. To read that active reactors in California like Diablo Canyon were built to withstand earthquakes of magnitude 7.5 is cold comfort. Perhaps hope can be found in burgeoning waste-to-energy technology.

This earthquake, even at magnitude 9.0, cannot shake our resolve. To the contrary, with the oil fields of the Middle East in ever deepening turmoil, we must extend our hands, heads and hearts to our dear friends across the Pacific, and learn to be more like them in their civility, to live as they do in their density, to build our world much as they have, in Japan, the ultimate Country of Cities.

"In a mountainous country the approximate size of California but with the arable land area only twice the size of Massachusetts, Japan houses some 127 million people in a condition that is roughly ten times denser than the United States." Photo by Vishaan Chakrabarti

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This is the tenth and final installment in a series of opinion pieces in which Vishaan Chakrabarti casts key current events as rallying cries in his evolving argument for urban density, for a Country of Cities. The views expressed here are those of the author only and do not reflect the position of Urban Omnibus editorial staff or the Architectural League of New York.

Vishaan Chakrabarti, AIA, is the Marc Holliday Professor of Real Estate and the Director of the Real Estate Development program in the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation at Columbia University and the founding principal of Vishaan Chakrabarti Design Collaborative (VCDC, llc), an urban design, planning, and strategic advisory firm based in Manhattan. He is a registered architect in the State of New York and lives in Tribeca. Read more…

What follows is the ninth in a series of opinion pieces in which Vishaan Chakrabarti casts key current events — the climate talks in Denmark, the Gulf Oil Spill, the canceling of the ARC tunnel project — as rallying cries in his evolving argument for urban density, for a Country of Cities. In this installment, he examines the protests unfolding across the Middle East in terms of how urban space, specifically spaces of public assembly, reflects the political priorities of those in power and enhances or prohibits social change. -C.S.

Tahrir Square, February 2011. Photo: Al Jazeera English. Some Rights Reserved. For a clickable interactive map of the protest camp in Tahrir Square produced by the BBC, click here.

As the revolution in Egypt has unfolded, much attention has been paid to the significance of Facebook and Twitter as organizing platforms for the revolutionaries. Indeed, the Mubarak government shut down the Internet over the past few weeks to limit communications, a move that proved futile in either suppressing the uprising or prolonging his rule.

Of equal, if not greater, importance has been the platform (a word that once referred to something exclusively physical) provided by Tahrir Square in central Cairo, the geographic epicenter of the revolt. The breathless images of men and women, young and old, civilian and military, galvanizers and galvanized, together setting up encampments and protests in Tahrir Square, also known as Liberation Square, give us faith not only in humanity’s common right to assemble but our common expectation that cities, by definition, must provide ever-restless places of assembly.

Public spaces like Tompkins Square, Tiananmen Square and Tahrir Square have been stages for history because they provide the loci for urban gathering, particularly for a city’s youth. After all, if the revolution is to be televised, from where else would it be broadcast? One could argue that without cities and the spaces they inspire, nations themselves would never change.

Escalators in a shopping mall, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia | Photo: Vishaan Chakrabarti

It’s hard to imagine a nation without public spaces that foster urban values of mixture and inclusion: the closest I have experienced is Saudi Arabia, where I traveled last year. While there are major developed cities to be sure, one must question whether they fulfill basic standards of urbanity. Such standards are not a Western invention or imposition. Islamic civilizations have created some of the world’s great cities, starting with the religion’s original site of refuge and political organizing, the city of Medina (which means “city” in Arabic), and its holiest site, Mecca, to which the pious make pilgrimages in their millions every year.

Yet the unique morphology of contemporary Saudi Arabia’s capital, Riyadh, by contrast, stifles the very development of a public realm. With four million inhabitants and growing, Riyadh is virtually devoid of the public space in which forbidden activities such as the sharing of facilities between men and women, fraternizing between unmarried couples, or protests by abused “guest workers” could ever occur. There are very few places of gathering on the streets. There are virtually no cultural institutions that invite the public, such as movie theaters or performance halls. The most significant convening spaces used by the public are shopping malls, prized of course for their air conditioning, but also for the tight control of public behavior by the religious police that malls enable. In other words, the great social and creative mix of cities extolled throughout centuries of urban thought is made impossible in the urban agglomerations of Saudi.

Deera Square, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia | Photo via Wikipedia

This is not to say there are not public squares in Riyadh. Perhaps the most famous is Deera Square, which ex-pats call Chop Chop Square in reference to the public decapitations meted out to criminals convicted of murder, rape, even witchcraft, for all to witness. For the state-sanctioned activities in Deera Square alone, Saudi Arabia would be an international pariah if it weren’t for the vast oil reserves that fuel our SUVs and McMansions.

Tiananmen Square, Beijing, China | Photos, clockwise from top left by Flickr users Jere Dow, Aaron Olaf, Scott SM.

By contrast, Tiananmen Square, also the site of considerable oppression, plays a substantially more nuanced role in both Beijing and for greater China. To be sure, Tiananmen in the summer of 1989 witnessed one of the greatest crackdowns on public dissent in history, but it’s also a place where young children learn to ride their bikes. By dusk, couples stroll through the Square. One encounters the occasional drunk. Even the events of 1989 did not emerge from a unified opposition with a uniform vision of change: organized workers and elite students held down separate parts of the Square with separate goals in mind. To date, I have few Chinese friends who believe the country should have a one-person-one-vote democracy, and generally there is a degree of faith in the central government that would be unthinkable in the United States.

August 28, 1963 | Civil Rights March on Washington, D.C. | via arcweb.archives.gov

In the US, we tend to take public spaces and the activities they enable for granted. From the history of protests in Tompkins Square Park, to Martin Luther King’s 1963 “I Have a Dream” speech on the Washington Mall, to the makeshift memorial built in Union Square after 9/11, it is deeply embedded in our psyche that civil discourse should have a stage on which to play out. While some moments of dissent occurred in contained surrounds like Rosa Parks’ bus, the majority of democracies worldwide will continue to see their hopes and pains played out in sweeping public spaces.

Surrounding Tompkins Square Park, Lower East Side residents protest the forceful closure of Tompkins Square Park. June 1991. Photo by Q. Sakamaki, via Gaia Photos.

In the weeks and months to come, it would be wise for us not to take for granted any emerging democracies that may unfold upon the public squares of the Middle East. The past few weeks were not our best as a nation, with President Obama and Secretary Clinton contradicting each other over the desired timing of Mubarak’s departure. There has been a pervasive sense that our foreign policy establishment, which helped establish the status quo, would prefer that very status quo to the risks of Egyptian self-rule. Instead of giving full-throated support to Egypt’s protesters, some seemed to be arguing that stability may need to overrule democracy as a practical matter, a realpolitik that has consistently placed us on the wrong side of history dating back to our support for the Shah of Iran. People may wearily point to the rise of the Ayatollahs in post-revolution Iran, but do they consider that had we not actively backed a vicious dictator for so many decades prior, Iranians may have been less tempted by such an extremist government? Instead we continue to play the lead role in our “axis of stability” formed by the US, Israel and Saudi Arabia, which understandably wants to maintain our primary peace treaty in the Middle East, but is just as concerned about the movement of oil through the Suez Canal. Again, we seek this so-called stability to perpetuate a lifestyle the world can no longer afford, and we can only resolve by urbanizing our great nation. As Thomas Friedman wrote in Sunday’s Times, “stability has left the building…good riddance.”

And perhaps this is the primary lesson about public space. That beyond our day-to-day needs for it be clean, amenable, and safe, it also has to allow for the expression of instability, for the expression of a world ever in need of change. Change is the essence of urbanity, and Egypt has reminded us that urban space can drive us towards a changed, perhaps unstable, but in the end better world.

This is what we imagine when we imagine a Country of Cities: a country and a world in which urbanity drives us towards a new, untested reality. We imagine our nation as dense and transit-based, so that our needs for gasoline and home heating oil don’t cause our government to back oppressive Middle Eastern regimes. We imagine a country and world in which a horrifying place like Deera Square can someday truly be public. We imagine a world in which pharaohs exit, and liberty prevails.

Protests in Manama, Bahrain, February 2011. At the time of posting, protests were entering their third day in Pearl Square, a traffic circle in central Manama. | Photo by Flickr user Chan’ad

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This is the ninth in a series of opinion pieces in which Vishaan Chakrabarti casts key current events as rallying cries in his evolving argument for urban density, for a Country of Cities. The views expressed here are those of the author only and do not reflect the position of Urban Omnibus editorial staff or the Architectural League of New York.

Vishaan Chakrabarti, AIA, is the Marc Holliday Professor of Real Estate and the Director of the Real Estate Development program in the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation at Columbia University and the founding principal of Vishaan Chakrabarti Design Collaborative (VCDC, llc), an urban design, planning, and strategic advisory firm based in Manhattan. He is a registered architect in the State of New York and lives in Tribeca. Read more…

Access to the Region's Core Project Map, via www.arctunnel.com

We all of course know the story of Noah’s Ark — of massive floods sent by a disgusted God to wipe out our corrupted civilization except for Noah, who, with his family, builds an Ark to save pairs of animals to eventually repopulate the planet.

The contemporary take on the story has some new twists.

The rains, to be sure, are coming. Last week I took my eight-year-old to see Rising Currents before it closes at MoMA. As he stood below the measuring bar, which showed that in his lifetime the water level on our Tribeca sidewalk may be above his head, he stated the truth in the way that only a child can: “That seems bad.”

But before we even conjure the apocalyptic visions of Greenland ice sheets falling into the Atlantic, we need only look at the crippling effect of the last couple of rainstorms in New York — the flooded subways, the combined sewer overflow, the streets near my office at Columbia awash.

Yet in this version of the story, despite the coming floods, there is no Noah, we don’t build the Ark, and the animals just have fun while they can. In this version, we sink the Ark before it gets built.

Yesterday Governor Chris Christie killed the largest mass transit project in the nation, ARC or Access to the Region’s Core. Planned for two decades and considered vital to the lifeline of the northeast corridor as a new tunnel under the Hudson, ARC clearly answered the question of whether we would simply continue to live off of our predecessor’s infrastructure. Or so we foolishly thought.

Citing costs, the rebellious Republican ruled out increasing gas taxes or surcharges in order to plug the budget gap, instead rejecting billions in Federal and Port Authority funds. Unlike the manner in which we funded the extension of the #7 subway, which is now under construction through debt that will be paid off by the future assessed values on the West Side of Manhattan, no such innovation was sought in New Jersey despite reports that clearly showed increased property values in the towns that would be connected to ARC.

Paul Krugman, in today’s New York Times, put it plainly: “We are no longer the nation that used to amaze the world with its visionary projects. We have become, instead, a nation whose politicians seem to compete over who can show the least vision, the least concern about the future and the greatest willingness to pander to short-term, narrow-minded selfishness.”

Penn Station’s New Jersey Transit Terminal, Thanksgiving Eve. Photo by Flickr user helloturkeytoe.

And when it comes to infrastructure, that pandering is all about roads versus rail. With New Jersey’s state budget under water, downstate politicians in the legislature — many of them Democrats — saw an opportunity to re-route the ARC monies for highway funding. New Jersey’s commuters live largely in the north, of course, but despite their vital economic role in our tri-state region, they have no regional representation to fight for their interests. This is true nationwide. In the development and planning process for the new Moynihan Station often it became apparent that for every dollar spent in the City, an equal dollar had to be spent on a roadway project in upstate New York. This is part of why Hong Kong and Singapore are surging — they are city-states without an urban rural divide. Such is the price of a country of suburbs.

To be fair to a Governor who appears to be attempting fiscal restraint, however, one must also ask why ARC costs so damn much. A friend recently pointed out that not only does China spend approximately fourteen times more annually on rail infrastructure than we do, but that factor probably triples when one accounts for construction cost differentials. Anyone who works in infrastructure in America today knows the ugly realities of this — the construction industry continually prices its way into joblessness, as the thousands of workers who were about to be employed by ARC will soon discover.

No one is advocating for the unprotected labor conditions of China, but we must ask how far the pendulum has swung the other way. Imagine if Noah, in enlisting the help of his children to build the Ark, was confronted with protests for higher allowance and more days off, all while thunderclouds formed and the rest of non-unionized humanity scuttled for cover while living on less. Joint sacrifice led this country to its greatest heights, just as joint selfishness could bring it to its knees.

Indeed, the fate of ARC, which one can only hope is reversible, may signal the fate of us all. With the densest state in America opting for roads over rails, for emissions over ozone, for a country of suburbs over a Country of Cities, all I can do in response is throw up my hands and find disturbing amusement in a quote from Jaws:

“We’re going to need a bigger boat.”

New Jersey Transit, Metropark, New Jersey, 18 Nov. 2008. Photo by Flickr user PhilipC.

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This is the eighth in a series of opinion pieces in which Vishaan Chakrabarti casts key current events as rallying cries in his evolving argument for urban density, for a Country of Cities. As with all review and opinion pieces posted on Urban Omnibus, the views expressed are those of the author only and do not reflect the position of Urban Omnibus editorial staff or the Architectural League of New York.

Vishaan Chakrabarti, AIA, is the Marc Holliday Professor of Real Estate and the Director of the Real Estate Development program in the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation at Columbia University and the founding principal of Vishaan Chakrabarti Design Collaborative (VCDC, llc), an urban design, planning, and strategic advisory firm based in Manhattan. He is a registered architect in the State of New York and lives in Tribeca. Read more…

Tucson, AZ, 1969 | Photo courtesy of Vishaan Chakrabarti.

Xenophobia.  Unfunded entitlements.  Anti-immigrant zeal.  More retirees than workers.  Crumbling infrastructure.  Failing schools.  Threats to burn books.

Taken together, our national ailments have shaken my belief in a Country of Cities. I have argued on these pages that density and infrastructure, and the diverse ecology they engender, can lead us out of this recession to a greener, leaner nation. Yet how can we ask the nation to emulate our model of life in New York if we abandon inclusiveness, the most fundamental ecological strength that binds us together as a city? If the majority of New Yorkers oppose religious freedom and private property rights, as the recent New York Times poll regarding the proposed downtown Islamic cultural center startlingly uncovered, how can I dare propose that our way of life lead the nation out of this malaise?

None of the ailments above describe the aspirations of post-war New York. Having avoided the tribalism that had twice set Europe ablaze, we were looked to by most of the world as the model that had created unrivaled opportunities to become middle class, the model that sought freedom of speech and civil rights, and the model that had paved an open path for striving immigrants. Mad Men Manhattan was by no means perfect, but it aspired towards a brave new world of meritocracy. By contrast, India — the country my parents left in 1968 with $32, two graduate degrees, and two toddlers — was defined by searing religious strife and protectionist economic policies that impoverished millions for decades, only to emerge today as a secular democracy that in many ways mirrors imperfect post-war America in its tolerance, entrepreneurialism and ambition.

What a difference a half century makes. While sea levels are surely rising, the Atlantic seems to simultaneously be shrinking as our society perilously closes the gap between the United States and the most venal tendencies of 1930s Europe.

Never in this country could I imagine the outright racism now being directed at Muslims. For those who claim the issue of the cultural center is one of sensitivity, not racism, I offer the following question: If a radical “pro-lifer” blew up an abortion clinic, crazily killing innocents in the name of a Christian god, would there be protests if years later a Christian community center was proposed nearby? To the contrary, it would be seen as an act of healing. The religious intolerance at the root of this double standard is clear, and is made all the more so as mosques and Muslims nationwide are attacked regardless of their proximity to ground zero. Also clear is the Republican double standard, in which private property rights and local control are held sacrosanct until the local, private decision offends the tyranny of their own majority.

Never in this country could I imagine the new Arizona immigration law. In 1968 my family moved from Calcutta to Tucson, where my father taught chemistry and conducted cataract research. We didn’t carry our passports. My beautiful brown children, however, will not visit the Grand Canyon, will not see the ramshackle house their grandparents were welcomed to by their neighbors, will not experience the open sky of that American west, because my children too will not travel in their own country while carrying passports.

Never in this country could I imagine the decline of the educational system — the very system for which my parents remained in the US — to the point that half of Americans between the ages of 18 and 24 can’t find New York on an unlabeled world map. And as the Times poll on the cultural center also revealed, opposition to the center increased as education levels decreased. When Democrats in the NY Legislature block charter school seats desperately sought after by parents in Harlem, when seniority beats meritocracy in the union ranks, when bad teachers are shuffled around like fallen priests, is there any wonder as to the roots of our educational decline?

Never in this country could I imagine the comparative disadvantage of our infrastructure to the point where China has the world’s fastest passenger train, New Delhi runs all of its buses and taxis on compressed natural gas, Hong Kong connects its airport to its downtown via express train, and Brazil is the world’s leading biofuel producer. How can we better understand our cultural differences if we continually privilege the cultural isolation of cars and single-family homes over the infrastructure that binds us as one society? Yet with every last discretionary tax dollar propping up either wasteful entitlements or wasteful defense spending, can we hope to muster the support for retiring all of the Bush tax cuts in 2012 as Peter Orszag, Obama’s former Budget Director, has rightly proposed? Even the most liberal-minded must question whether the unaffordable tax cuts — which virtually every economist agrees do not pay for themselves — could be repealed when we know in our guts that the increased government revenue in the hands of our Congress would not fund deficit reduction nor would it fund the hundreds of billions needed for investments in clean infrastructure and green energy. To be sure, the President should be applauded for his recent proposal, backed by Governors Schwarzenegger and Rendell as well as Mayor Bloomberg, for a $50 billion National Infrastructure Bank. But with national high speed rail alone projected to cost multiples of this, it is disappointing that this much-touted campaign proposal was withheld from the original $787 billion stimulus package. Instead, the “stimulus” crafted by Congressional Democrats essentially propped up bloated local budgets rather than creating good jobs for today and smart infrastructure for tomorrow.

Aspiration was the centerpiece of the tumultuous America my parents envisioned as they boarded their flight in 1968. Separated by money, culture and age from the largely comfortable angst of baby boomer protests, my parents nonetheless understood that the liberal values of tolerance and equity were convergent with the conservative values of entrepreneurialism and investment. For all immigrants regardless of race or religion, these combined values equated to opportunity, to the chance, but not the promise, that their children may just lead better lives.

As a city and a country, to what do we aspire now? Perhaps New York, rallied by Michael Bloomberg, the only leader in America who has spoken clearly and righteously on these issues, can still lead our nation towards our own stated values. After all, the Times poll also indicated that support for the cultural center increased with density, perhaps proof that proximity leads to understanding.

Other than Native Americans, our families all came to this country, in large measure through the harbor of New York City, to escape the oppressions of their homelands, whether it was religious persecution or taxation without representation. Whatever ailments plagued their countries of origin — whether it was England or Italy, India or Iran — they carried with them the aspiration that those problems would never darken our shores. Now, as these ailments attempt to redefine who we are as a nation, we must declare, we must demand, never in this country.

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This is the seventh in a series of opinion pieces in which Vishaan Chakrabarti casts key current events as rallying cries in his evolving argument for urban density, for a Country of Cities. As with all review and opinion pieces posted on Urban Omnibus, the views expressed are those of the author only and do not reflect the position of Urban Omnibus editorial staff or the Architectural League of New York.

Vishaan Chakrabarti, AIA, is the Marc Holliday Professor of Real Estate and the Director of the Real Estate Development program in the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation at Columbia University and the founding principal of Vishaan Chakrabarti Design Collaborative (VCDC, llc), an urban design, planning, and strategic advisory firm based in Manhattan. He is a registered architect in the State of New York and lives in Tribeca. Read more…

Consider some simple math about people and land. If all of Earth’s six billion people were to live at the density we do here in the five boroughs of New York City, all of humanity would occupy less than one half of one percent of the earth’s land mass. Only one half of one percent, with the vast majority of the planet left unspoiled – it is extraordinary.

This equates to about 8% of the land mass of the continental U.S. — roughly the size of Texas. Yes folks, all of us, the entire planet, could live as New Yorkers in Texas.

According to the United Nations, by 2050 the population is supposed to soar to 9 billion, so at New York densities, the planet’s populace would occupy both Texas and a big chunk of New Mexico. This would mean that liberals too would have a place to live.

So the problem we have as a planet is not population growth. To the contrary, one only need look at the crisis unfolding in Europe to understand that population growth and immigration are critical to a sustainable economy.

No, the problem is not growth, but how that growth will physically manifest itself. With 75% of the population of the planet projected by the UN to live in large urban regions by 2050, the question facing us is whether we will live tall or live in sprawl — whether we grow while protecting nature rather than living in it.

And while this is the core environmental question of our epoch, it is also the core economic question.

Consider a 2001 study done at the University of Chicago, which examined all of the counties of the U.S. It found the “50-2” rule: 50% of the Gross Domestic Product of the United States is generated by a mere 2% of its land mass. Conversely, the study found that 50% of the land mass of the U.S. generates less than 2% of its GDP.

That same study found that New York City annually generates a staggering $1.5 billion per square mile of the country’s GDP.

With density comes prosperity, and prosperity should yield political power. Yet consistently we in New York City give billions of tax dollars to Albany and to Washington that never return, billions we could use to fund our much-needed infrastructure. Imagine the subways, the parks, the schools, the affordable housing, the high speed rail, the bike lanes we could build if we could keep a larger percentage of the wealth that our very lifestyle generates.

Yet, for example, at a recent Forum for Urban Design dinner held here in New York regarding America in 2050, we heard analyses that either purposefully ignored the subsidies that facilitate people’s choices to live in the suburbs, therefore skewing all the data presented, or we heard that in an attempt to densify America, the best we can hope for is “walkable urbanism,” the epitome of which apparently is – wait for it – Bethesda, Maryland! Well meaning as this may be, is Bethesda really the best we can hope for? A place where virtually everyone lives in a single family house and drives to get a quart of milk?



Bethesda, Maryland | Photo by Flickr user macmoov.

We need a far more coherent public voice for real urbanity and the infrastructure it needs to grow, a voice that speaks outside of the politics of both parties. The right tends to decry public spending. The left tends to favor entitlements over investments. The right tends to fight regulations that curb sprawl and prices carbon. The left fights for environmental regulations and bureaucracies that can imperil infrastructure. New York’s Moynihan Station project, which is on its fourth – yes, count it, fourth – Environmental Impact Statement, is a cautionary tale in this regard. Congestion pricing, at which we must take another shot if we are to be the twenty-first century city we imagine, was a bi-partisan failure.

So let us form a new infrastructure coalition, one that binds the needs of mobility and density. One that can rightfully claim that through smart urbanization, we can attack virtually every problem we read about on the front pages of our newspapers.

Study after study shows that dense urban environments, supported by the right transportation, lead to lower health care costs, less dependence on foreign oil, less risk of environmental accidents, less global warming, and more competitiveness.

As city dwellers we must win this fight to build a Country of Cities. Because we generate most of this country’s well being, because per capita we produce more while consuming less, we must demand our fair share. Put bluntly, this land is our land, because this land is made by you and me.


This is the sixth in a series of opinion pieces in which Vishaan Chakrabarti casts key current events as rallying cries in his evolving argument for urban density, for a Country of Cities. As with all review and opinion pieces posted on Urban Omnibus, the views expressed are those of the author only and do not reflect the position of Urban Omnibus editorial staff or the Architectural League of New York.

Vishaan Chakrabarti, AIA, is the Marc Holliday Professor of Real Estate and the Director of the Real Estate Development program in the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation at Columbia University and the founding principal of Vishaan Chakrabarti Design Collaborative (VCDC, llc), an urban design, planning, and strategic advisory firm based in Manhattan. He is a registered architect in the State of New York and lives in Tribeca. Read more…

The 2010 Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill on April 29th, 2010, day 9

As oil spills into the Gulf, blood spills in the streets of Greece, and cash spills from terrorist wallets into the hands of willing airline agents, one wonders who can clean up this mess. We tell our children to clean up after themselves, but can we? Disciplining a child is a perilous affair, but in the end self-discipline is the challenge. Self-discipline requires introspection, but how much of it can we muster in a world careening towards 9 billion people?

Do we, for instance, have the introspection to understand that drilling for oil, mining for coal, and supporting the oppression of petroleum regimes should all go the way of the Dodo? Do we understand that extraction is tantamount to extinction?

Conversely, do we have the introspection to understand that when a liberal juggernaut like the Kennedy family fights a wind farm in their own view shed, it’s an invitation for Sarah Palin to invoke us to “drill, baby, drill?”

And when we drill, do we have the introspection to understand that we fuel all the craven instincts most Americans are tempted to hold dear, like driving a minivan to get a quart of milk, or tearing down a 2000sf house to build a 6000sf monstrosity? A friend recently sent me floorplans of his sprawling home that he now plans to expand by building a third garage spot for his new electric car. Given that New Delhi, not New York, has converted its entire bus, taxi and rickshaw fleet to compressed natural gas, is a Honda Insight in a huge suburban garage really that insightful?

The Delhi Transport Corporation boasts the world's largest eco-friendly compressed natural gas (C.N.G.) bus service.

As goes our land use, so goes our economy. As our bodies grow horizontally with our cities, we spend more money per capita on healthcare then any nation on earth. And as we feed our cravings by pouring money into roads instead of rails, care instead of prevention, and oil wars instead of renewable resources, we finally arrive at the gaping sprawl of our deficit.

Introspection demands that we ask ourselves – as our children who pay our debts shall – are we a BRIC or are we PIIGS? The BRIC nations (Brazil, Russia, India, China) are projected to have a larger combined GDP than that of the G7 by 2050. By contrast, the PIIGS (Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece, Spain), could plunge the world into deep economic chaos due to their profligate social spending. There is speculation that politically deadlocked Britain may falter next.

The future of the West is resolved for some. Mike Geoghegan, chief executive of HSBC, recently announced the relocation of Britain’s largest bank to Hong Kong.  His rationale for their move was unambiguous: “I believe the 2010s will bring about the close of the Western-centric mindset,” he said. “We have now reached a point of no return. In a few years time, who’ll remember the G7?  We’ll remember the E7 – China, India, Brazil, Russia, Mexico, Indonesia and Turkey. These are the ones which will matter.”

Yet the West does matter to those who chant “kill, baby, kill.”  We matter to those who would blow up a gas-guzzling Pathfinder in Times Square, those whose days are spent devising explosive underwear, those who are financed by the spoils of our SUVs and our regional air travel. The GOP’s response is to drill domestically even though our economy, if we tried to fuel it solely with our domestic oil capacity, would grind to a halt in a scant four years. The Democrats’ response is continually to privilege entitlements over investments, relegating hard tasks like taxing carbon and stripping highway subsidies to the President Gore that alas shall never be.

The 2010 Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill on May 4th, 2010, day 15

But the ultimate question is “Do we matter to ourselves?” Do we have the introspection to protect our coastlines, our cities, and our citizens? Do we have the strength to reject the threat that is oil, both foreign and domestic? Do we have the vision to recognize that we have seen the enemy, and it is the suburban house? Do we have the will to embrace high-density living as the only solution, the only land use that limits our energy use, our healthcare costs, our vulnerability to petro-dictators, and our free fall into a sprawling national deficit?

Let us cry over some spilled oil, but let us then find some introspection in the tragedy. Let us rebuild this nation by being the America that built Grand Central Station and Park Avenue, by being the America that built the inter-continental railroad, by being the America that once welcomed striving immigrants to the shores of her cities, by being the America that invented the internet and alternative energy. Let us build a new America that desires density and shuns suburbs.

Let us not be babies who drill, spill or kill. Let us build a Country of Cities.

An oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico

Images (top to bottom):

Oil Spill day 9: NASA Goddard photo and video

Delhi Transport Corporation Bus: Flickr user antwelm

Oil Spill day 15: NASA Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, AL

Oil Rig: Flickr user alwright1

As with all review and opinion pieces posted on Urban Omnibus, the views expressed are those of the author only and do not reflect the position of Urban Omnibus editorial staff or the Architectural League of New York.

Vishaan Chakrabarti, AIA, is the Marc Holliday Professor of Real Estate and the Director of the Real Estate Development program in the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation at Columbia University and the founding principal of Vishaan Chakrabarti Design Collaborative (VCDC, llc), an urban design, planning, and strategic advisory firm based in Manhattan. He is a registered architect in the State of New York and lives in Tribeca. Read more…

As Mayor, he was well known for his trademark low-budget solutions to Curitiba’s mobility and environmental problems such as bus rapid transit, cash-for-trash, and the transformation of floodplains into sprawling city parks. Perhaps less known is Lerner’s longstanding embrace of high-rise density, from the intense mixed-use corridor that lines Curitiba’s BRT routes to his current proposals for densification of new transit nodes in São Paulo, in which the revenue created through new density is proposed to fund critically needed park and transit infrastructure.

Bus Rapid Transit stop, Curitiba, Brazil. Photo: Mathieu Struck

“The City is not part of the problem, it is part of the solution” Lerner insists in reference to climate change. Few topics charge him up like the issue of urban mobility. For smaller neighborhoods, he proposes miniature electric cars for individuals called Dock Docks. In larger cities, he proposes transfer tubes to move passengers from smart buses to smart subways in free fare zones. In Lerner’s world, everything must be smarter, and must use every unit of space and resource with wisdom and clarity. His work continually recognizes that the jump in scale from Curitiba to São Paulo demands a jump in the scale of intervention. Yet in all cases Lerner states unequivocally that the key issue facing a rapidly developing planet is the distance people must travel to get to work – the means by which that distance can be smartly traversed and reduced, he rightly asserts, are the keys to global sustainability.

About green buildings, by contrast, he shrugs. Nice, he says, but the real issue is how people move between the buildings.

Bus, Curitiba, Brazil. Photo: Mathieu Struck

Scalable solutions to urban mobility and sustainability require the logic of design

And with this simple shrug he plunges our professions, without pretense or guile, into the quandary of our epoch. It is human nature, after all, to toil within our arena of influence, even if that arena has no more impact than the proverbial re-arranging of the Titanic’s deck chairs, with perhaps some brilliant thoughts on design and recyclable content on the way down. Madonna made it clear that we are living in a material world, and we as architects, planners, and developers build much of that new material, with limited opportunities to remake the material that came before us. While it is true that a large percentage of greenhouse gases are generated by the existing building stock, how much agency do we have to meaningfully alter the majority of this existing stock? Do we honestly believe weatherizing McMansions will solve a thing? Noble though it may attempt to be, the impact of building greener new buildings and retrofitting a few older ones is negligible compared to the scale of global climate change, yet that is the limited potency that the design and development professions manage to muster and ballyhoo.

The actual material we as professionals wield in response to worldwide urbanization is a broader and far more significant matter, and demands that our professions influence the form and mobility, the very morphology, of our cities. It was not that long ago that we as architects had a far greater arena of influence, that we designed cities for monarchs and pontiffs, that we planned subways and schools for citizens and scholars, that we swayed the heads and hearts of presidents and prime ministers.  The word architect was once synonymous with power.

We were, once, important.

Today the word “architect,” though officially adjudicated by the AIA along an increasingly narrower bandwidth, is more commonly heard in reference to strategists like Karl Rove. Not since Harvey Gantt, former Mayor and Senate candidate, have we seen an actual architect in a major position of power in American politics. How far we have fallen since (or perhaps in part due to?) Thomas Jefferson.

Intersection, Curitiba, Brazil. Photo: Mathieu Struck

Yet lead we can and lead we must. What Jaime Lerner teaches us, what students today tend to understand better than practitioners, is that as designers we can lead as others cannot. We are empowered with a holistic understanding of the environment and a project-based education that are ideally suited to the challenges of our day. Even business schools are attempting to adopt a “design-based thinking” curriculum, an arena in which we hold the high ground. As Lerner’s work so clearly reveals, the ability to conceptualize scalable solutions to urban mobility and sustainability requires the logic of design. It is with that field of vision that designers – be they architects, planners, or developers – can take on the scale of the problems the entire globe faces rather than settling for the sustainability scraps left on our plate.

Few words summarize this better than Jaime’s response to the question burning in me after the lecture. In which capacity has he had the ability to have more impact, I asked, as an architect or as a mayor?

He smiled wryly, took a long sip of deep red wine, and said “I’m the best client I ever had.”

All images by Flickr user Mathieu Struck. Some rights reserved.

This is the fourth in a series of opinion pieces in which Vishaan Chakrabarti casts key current events as rallying cries in his evolving argument for urban density, for a Country of Cities. As with all review and opinion pieces posted on Urban Omnibus, the views expressed are those of the author only and do not reflect the position of Urban Omnibus editorial staff or the Architectural League of New York.

Vishaan Chakrabarti, AIA, is the Marc Holliday Professor of Real Estate and the Director of the Real Estate Development program in the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation at Columbia University and the founding principal of Vishaan Chakrabarti Design Collaborative (VCDC, llc), an urban design, planning, and strategic advisory firm based in Manhattan. He is a registered architect in the State of New York and lives in Tribeca. Read more…

President Barack Obama, State of the Union Address, Jan. 27, 2010. Official White House Photo by Pete Souza.

“…we can put Americans to work today building the infrastructure of tomorrow. From the first railroads to the interstate highway system, our nation has always been built to compete. There’s no reason Europe or China should have the fastest trains…” -President Barack Obama, State of the Union Address, January 27, 2010.

It is a watershed moment when any President spares precious moments from a State of the Union address to utter such words. In 2007 candidate Obama had me at hello. Now the bar is higher, now he has me at hello, I want to build the Infrastructure of Tomorrow.

Yet as these pages have attempted to articulate, it is hard to bridge the gap between the President’s aspirations and the next sentence from his address: “Tomorrow, I’ll visit Tampa, Florida, where workers will soon break ground on a new high-speed railroad funded by the Recovery Act.” In referring to the $1.25 billion funding for the proposed 168mph train between Tampa and Orlando, one local politician told The New York Times “It’s the biggest thing since Walt Disney World for the I-4 Corridor.”

“We didn’t pick this based on politics. I mean this sincerely,” The Vice President stated unconvincingly at a Florida rally the next day. “We’re picking the places that make the most sense, have the highest density, are ready to go.” Yes, he was speaking of Tampa and Orlando, those high density places. Clearly in this instance, Tomorrowland took priority over Tomorrow.

Tampa, Florida. Photo by Flickr user J. Stephen Conn.

But perhaps it’s time to take a pause from the criticism.

Many progressive readers, in digesting my last entry here on Urban Omnibus, were upset by my intense criticism of the President’s health care initiative. To be sure, most agreed with the emphasis on infrastructure – they just want both. The money for both, they argued, could come from higher taxes or fewer wars. Some were shocked to read that I believe the “AFPAK” situation to be a true existential threat, and therefore support the President’s troop deployment.

But perhaps none of these arguments are pertinent. Perhaps what is pertinent is that we have a President who uses the word “infrastructure” in his State of the Union address. That we have a Vice President who uses the word “density.” (I think Dick Cheney used this word only in relation to his former boss.) Perhaps in the ever-maddening world of Washington D.C. – the clearinghouse for the representatives of exurban America – such baby steps are as good as it gets.

Yet it is still confounding that the best we can get is $8 billion towards high-speed rail when we need at least $150 billion for all of the major corridors including California, Chicago-St. Paul, Char-Lanta, the Northeast, and yes, Florida. It is confounding when the Vice President states that the $1.25 billion investment in the Tampa-Orlando corridor will generate more than 23,000 jobs over four years, and that by extension one hundred times that investment nationwide might create 2,300,000 jobs. Now that would be stimulus.

But perhaps we should take solace in the fact that the President refers to the $8 billion as a “down payment.” Perhaps he knows that a true victory would be to leverage California’s state bond issue to bring true high-speed rail — as defined by international standards rather than by Amtrak — to the West Coast cities. Perhaps in the subtle use of the words “down payment,” in a Presidency in which every word matters, Obama is signaling that he will get to it all someday, if he can just win Florida in 2012.

Yet to state that “there’s no reason Europe or China should have the fastest trains,” is, with all due respect, disingenuous. Of course there are reasons. Those societies revel in their urban density, and they have the ability to allocate resources efficiently toward that end. China may soon overtake America in automobile production, but it also just unveiled the world’s fastest passenger train. At a top speed of 217mph, the Harmony Train if operating here would propel us from New York to Charlotte in approximately three hours, eliminating an enormous amount of the nation’s regional air traffic.

Folks, when you read this stuff, doesn’t it just scare the bejesus out of you?

Harmony Express, China. Photo: AFP

Recently I attended a terrific conference on vertical density in Hong Kong. Representatives from Hong Kong, Shanghai and New York were in attendance. An urban planning scholar explained that the construction underway in Shanghai for their rapid transit system will lead to 196km of new subway lines by 2020. By comparison, I sheepishly explained the joys of helping to extend the #7 line here in New York, which as a 2km extension now under construction is one of the first meaningful expansions of our century-old system in decades.

Of course critics will reply that China is authoritarian, and that it is an emerging economy going through a transformation mirroring our own industrial revolution. One conference attendee replied that “mature” economies don’t build infrastructure the way China or India must. Yet in his address the President rightly raised Europe as well as China. If one compares New York’s recent attempts to rebuild Penn Station versus London’s St. Pancras or Berlin’s Hauptbahnhof, if one looks at the expansion of rail lines in eastern London versus New York’s struggles to get a new Trans-Hudson tunnel built, one realizes that excuses of being too mature or too democratic to build infrastructure are simplistic expressions of complacency.

To be in Hong Kong illustrates this vividly. I hadn’t visited in over a decade, and in that time more density has been built, a few more skyscrapers dot the stunning skyline, but the advances one really notices are on the ground. The new airport. The 20-minute train from the airport to downtown. The gleaming subways that glide under Victoria Harbor from Kowloon to Central. The stunning new bridges and tunnels. The lush country parks.

Returning to the chaos of JFK, opting for the creaky cab over the Mickey-monorail to Jamaica, rumbling over the BQE, one is forced to ponder the distance between now and the President’s tomorrow.

Political arguments aside, the most popular concept generated from my last piece was “ASIA” (The American Smart Infrastructure Act), a proposed Federal bill that could – through the promotion of density and infrastructure – act as a silver bullet by simultaneously addressing climate change, our dependence on foreign oil, and health care costs.  In essence, it is proposed legislation to get us to the Infrastructure of Tomorrow for all of our truly dense places. Given the current political climate, this silver bullet could happen.

Consider that with the Brown victory in Massachusetts, the Commonwealth that voted for Reagan in 1984 and has had multiple Republican governors since has largely sealed the fate of large-scale health care reform. (Side question: Shouldn’t Rahm, for all of our sakes, spend much more time with his family?)

Consider that improvements in the economy are yielding little new employment, causing economists to worry about the fading impact of last year’s stimulus bill.

Consider that with the private sector still ducking for cover, the Federal government remains the spender of last resort, remains the only entity able to infuse much-needed liquidity.

And consider that with a President who understands that he has only made a down payment on the Infrastructure of Tomorrow, he and we have an opportunity to double down on density.

The President has an opportunity to use repaid bank bailout funds and yes, taxation on outsized bonuses, to pave a path towards a second stimulus package, a package that combines a jobs bill, a Cap and Trade bill, and a Federal transportation bill. This White House is too smart to put the word “infrastructure” in the limelight without knowing that it polls well. Americans know our physical environment is crumbling. Americans are traveling more. From “Weeds” to “The Wire,” they know in their hearts we have a predicament. To be sure, the deficit will be the issue. For good or bad, the deficit is an abstraction that to date has never won or lost an election. But more importantly, the right investments can be argued as a means to reduce the deficit.

So three cheers for Tampa. It is a start. Tampa and Orlando could be much denser, much more transit rich, and much more sustainable, but they are cities after all. And as we build them, perhaps we can make a bigger bet and double down on density nationwide. Perhaps the odds are with us. Perhaps we can build A Country of Cities.


This is the third in a series of opinion pieces in which Vishaan Chakrabarti casts key current events as rallying cries in his evolving argument for urban density, for a Country of Cities. As with all review and opinion pieces posted on Urban Omnibus, the views expressed are those of the author only and do not reflect the position of Urban Omnibus editorial staff or the Architectural League of New York.

Vishaan Chakrabarti, AIA, is the Marc Holliday Professor of Real Estate and the Director of the Real Estate Development program in the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation at Columbia University. He is also the founding principal of Vishaan Chakrabarti Design Collaborative (VCDC, llc), an urban design, planning, and strategic advisory firm based in Manhattan. Formerly an Executive Vice President of Related Companies, Chakrabarti ran the design and planning operations for the firm’s extensive development portfolio. Through VCDC, Chakrabarti continues to advance the Moynihan Station project, as well as consult on the urban design effort for the Hudson Rail Yards. Read more…