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December 2, 2011
Treasuring Urban Oases
The New York Times
by Michael Kimmelman
The Times's recently appointed architecture critic continues to right the wrongs of his predecessors. Keep up the good work, Mr. Kimmelman.
What passes for public space in many crowded neighborhoods often means some token gesture by a developer, built in exchange for the right to erect a taller skyscraper. [Alexander] Garvin, an architect, urban planner and veteran of five city administrations, going back to the era of Mayor John V. Lindsay (1966-73), has spent the better part of the last half-century thinking about these spaces.
“The public realm is what we own and control,” he told me the other day when we met to look around Midtown. More than just common property, he added, “the streets, squares, parks, infrastructure and public buildings make up the fundamental element in any community — the framework around which everything else grows.”
Or should grow.
...But what makes high-density neighborhoods pedestrian friendly?
Good public space for starters.
...The Dutch today put together what they call “structure plans” when they undertake big new public projects, like their high-speed rail station in Rotterdam: before celebrity architects show up, urban designers are called in to work out how best to organize the sites for the public good. It’s a formalized, fine-grained approach to the public realm. By contrast big urban projects on the drawing board in New York still tend to be the products of negotiations between government agencies anxious for economic improvement and private developers angling for zoning exemptions. As with the ill-conceived Atlantic Yards project in Brooklyn, the streets, subway entrances and plazas around Flatbush and Atlantic Avenues, where millions of New Yorkers will actually feel the development’s effects, seem like they’ve hardly been taken into account.
NoLandGrab: Better click through to the article fast before Mr. Kimmelman's editors realize that he didn't hew to the paper's usual fawning treatment of Atlantic Yards.
Posted by eric at December 2, 2011 1:19 PM