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April 30, 2008
Olympic Landscape
The NY Sun
By James Gardner
Congratulations Bruce Ratner, your Atlantic Yards plan is now on the short list of controversial projects in NYC:
When it comes to dreaming up grand architectural visions, repressive authoritarian regimes are clearly the way to go. There are none of those nettlesome obstructions that beset the urban planners of New York City: community boards and concerned citizens, good-government types and the dithering dysfunctionality of a score of agencies. Well known to all are the hurdles that developers and architects have encountered recently at ground zero and the Atlantic Yards, the acrimony that has beset Columbia University's West Harlem expansion, not to mention the travails of Londoners over furnishing Heathrow with one lousy little new runway.
Meanwhile, in less time than it takes for New Yorkers to draw up a committee to decide whether to vote on drawing up a committee, the city of Beijing has reinvented itself in anticipation of this August's Olympic Games. Whole neighborhoods have been gleefully wiped out in order to build the Beijing CBD, or Central Business District, situated between the capital's 3rd and 4th Ring Roads and now the site of CCTV headquarters, designed by the Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas.
Despite the social consequences, Beijing appears to be one NYC architecture critic's wet dream:
Taken together, the new architecture of Beijing is a partial and mitigated success, whatever its social benefit or harm. But however many eggs had to be broken to make this particular omelet, New Yorkers can only look on in envy and amazement at the boldness, the size, and the inventiveness of these new designs, which would never have stood a chance in Gotham.
NoLandGrab: Mayor Bloomberg would probably give his right arm to do away with the pesky Community Boards, heck, even skip the City Council, in order to "streamline" the city planning process. Imagine how many neighborhoods and blocks the city could have plowed and resown if the city had been awarded the 2012 Olympic games.
Posted by lumi at April 30, 2008 4:58 AM