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February 22, 2007
Landscape Architect Olin: streets are "useless"
From BrooklynSpeaks.net:
In a startlingly candid interview with the New York Observer (click here to read it), AY landscape architect Laurie Olin defends his superblock design for the project by declaring that space on streets is "actually useless space".
Olin was explaining why his design demaps Pacific Street: to maximize the amount of open space, and to keep cars out of the project area. Olin dismissed criticism that his design would create a superblock as "1960's language" and a "cliche".
BrooklynSpeaks explains how decades of evidence contradict the pronouncement of the esteemed landscape designer (no matter how badly he wants to believe that he's right), and outlines the differences between public streets and private parks.
NoLandGrab: Lost in the revision of the debate of Robert Moses vs. Jane Jacobs is one of Jacobs' primary, and perhaps most important, points.
During the early decades of the 20th Century, urban planners developed new planning principles that sounded good on paper, principles they believed would work because they said so. Jane Jacobs contended that this view was arrogant. Her groundbreaking premise was that the effects of organizing cities could and ought to be measured, and not merely surrendered to the latest trends proposed by urban planners. The planners at the time were schooled in principles that had a track record of being built, but not of accomplishing the goal of creating a more livable city.
In Laurie Olin's interview, he not only casually casts aside the more familiar Jacobsian notion that vibrant street life is essential for the urban environment to succeed, but ignores the more important message, that the effects of poor planning can be scientifically measured and that when data can demonstrate that an experiment is a failure, the mistake ought not be repeated.
This is not dogma; it's only proposition that we apply our best tool for understanding the universe, the scientific method, to the art and science of urban planning.
Posted by lumi at February 22, 2007 8:04 AM