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December 10, 2006
Big Urbanism
New York Times Magazine
Ever since 1964, when Robert Moses, New York’s master builder, was prevented from blasting a freeway through SoHo, the most successful urban-design strategies undertaken by large American cities have been essentially conservative. Jane Jacobs’s crusade against architectural master plans, combined with a growing historic-preservation movement and the fall of heroic high modernism, led to a generation of planners, architects and activists intent on restoring, rather than drastically reshaping, the urban fabric.But now cities are once again planning with grandiosity. This year witnessed the return of what you might call big urbanism, with large-scale redevelopment projects sprouting nationwide. In the summer, the New York City Planning Commission approved the controversial $4.2 billion, 22-acre Atlantic Yards project, which only a few years prior was widely dismissed as impossibly overscaled.
Posted by amy at December 10, 2006 1:22 PM