The exhibition of Paul Rudolph’s Lower Manhattan Expressway project currently on view at the Cooper Union may appear at first glance to be an academic excavation of a historical artifact, a lesser-known work by a prominent architect best remembered for individual buildings rather than for his visions of the metropolis. Although…
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…
Despite the impulse to marvel at Hong Kong’s sophisticated planning for and investment in infrastructure and urban density, might people there welcome some New York-style urbanism? Norman Oder, author of the watchdog blog Atlantic Yards Report, recaps two conferences that …
Tuesday morning, I attended the final vote of the Landmarks Preservation Commission hearing on whether or not to confer historic protection to 45-47 Park Place in Lower Manhattan. The commission voted unanimously (9-0) against protecting the site. For this site, …
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 …
|
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? |
…
For the past few days, something has been missing from the urban landscape of London. A quick scan of the city’s streets – red busses, black cabs – shows nothing amiss. Beneath them, the Underground proceeds apace through tubular …
Vishaan Chakrabarti takes Jaime Lerner’s transformation of Curitiba as a powerful call to action for designers to initiate change in architectural, ecological, political and urban terms.
Underneath a Manhattan-side artery of the Brooklyn Bridge is a pedestrian egress area linking streets Rose and Pearl. The area is of little consequence to most New Yorkers – it has neither a Wikipedia page nor a Google Maps marker …
|
Gerald Frug contrasts the structures and powers of city government in London and New York in order to ask a crucial urban question: what are our cities empowered to do? |
