Hello all, I’m thrilled to be your guest
Cityscapes blogger, one part of WNYC's multi-platform month-long examination of how the city has changed, and where it's heading next. Brian Lehrer will be speaking every Wednesday with the New Yorker's architecture critic, Paul Goldberger, and a rotating cast of the city leading architects, who will also be contributing video diaries. I'll be here providing context, drawing connections, soliciting comments, and making statements you might disagree with.
For example: I love the changing city. No doubt I have the occasional nostalgic streak, but more often than not I am invigorated by New York’s creative destruction—by the holes in the ground, the churn of restaurants and stores, the occasional glittering gem of a fresh building, and even (but too frequently) the heartbreaking eyesore of a new condo, made of cardboard and glass. Yet as Hugh Hardy and Paul Goldberger both bluntly put it
on the radio yesterday: “You can’t freeze the city.” Whatever pause we’re in the midst of now, it’s likely temporary. That’s not boosterism—more like metabolism. But that still makes this the right moment for reflecting on the changes in the cityscape.
Reading
your comments, watching
Hugh’s videos, and listening to Brian’s
segment, it’s clear a lot of you feel the same way: filled with profoundly mixed feelings about the city’s most recent reinventions. Angry at what’s lost. Tickled by what’s new. I—and a bunch of us who write about architecture for a living—have recently been feeling especially disillusioned, not merely by the financial houses of cards built by Wall Street, but also by the literal houses of glass and steel we heralded, which in retrospect can seem as empty as a subprime mortgage-backed security. Is the New Museum on the Bowery, for example, a cosmopolitan addition to the cityscape, a witty comment on zoning and background buildings, a triumph of the city’s ongoing devotion to art and culture? Or a dirty blank façade that mocks us—along with the soup kitchen next door—for paying more attention to luxury than humanity? (Commenter
RLewis on Wednesday’s segment seems torn about this as well.) As Brian put it on the air, it’s time to take stock of where we are as a physical city, “
and what it means to our lives.”
Photo by Amy Pearl
I’ve been challenging myself to move away from thinking about the cityscape only in these classic terms of aesthetics and economics. I’ve also begun to believe that the
unwritten story of the city’s future is wholly intertwined with the story of climate change. By virtue of their size and density, cities are the biggest users of energy. But they can also be the most efficient. So looking at the cityscape, I ask myself not only if it’s ugly or pretty, just or unjust, but also how it responds to the rising swells—of carbon, seawater, whatever. Does a new
building,
park or
streetscape make the city more livable for more people? Can it be "less bad" by being non-toxic and low-power, and also be good by making dense and efficient city living the best kind of living? (If you live here, you're probably ready with an answer.)
More on that over the next weeks from me and, no doubt, from architects
Michael van Valkenburgh,
Steven Cassell and
Liz Diller. Glad to be here.
