Mass Transit Movement
Rem Koolhaus paints a grim picture for the future of London in his writing “Exodus.” His model calls for an architectural attack, if you will, towards the old London. The gigantic over-scaled strip positions itself on top of the old city, ignoring any historical context or significance. He describes programmatic elements within the strip that make an attempt to connect with the past and the present, but due to such rapid growth (not necessarily population growth, but growth of ideas), these elements are unable to recognize anything but the future. For example, an art museum on the strip makes an attempt to connect with the past, but it consists of empty frames and pedestals. Not only is the past forgotten, but the rapid nature of Exodus is too fast to even recognize the current times. The following excerpt describes this phenomenon:
“At the top, a group of sculptors debate whose bust to carve into the rock; but in the accelerated atmosphere of this prison, no one is important long enough for them ever to reach a conclusion.”
This statement can be associated with a statement he made in another writing of his, entitled “Junkspace.” In the passage, he describes Junkspace as having “zero loyalty toward configuration, no original condition.” This results in a “permanent evolution.” At one point, he relates Junkspace to a computer’s screensaver, or as he refers to this condition as – “instant amnesia.” Junkspace, the way Koolhaus describes it, is unavoidable to an extent, and in some cases, may actually be beneficial to society at a given moment or time frame. However, certain products of Junkspace, such as Exodus, could lead to the downfall and brainwashing of the people of any city. For this reason, when planning for the future of New York at the urban scale, it is important to show loyalty towards the original condition of the city. The first step in doing so is to identify the static elements and declare them as permanently static. These elements make up the historical backbone of the city, permanent fixtures of the future. A few of these elements are Central Park, Wall Street, Columbus Circle, Union Square, and the subway system. This is not to say that they cannot be touched. In fact, restorations and transformations are likely to occur, but their basic footprint and functionality of the element should remain the same as its original intent.
Left: Central Park 1864 Right: Central Park Today
Left: Columbus Circle 1919, Right: Columbus Circle Today
Most people who work, go to school, or spend a good portion of their time in New York, associate themselves with New York City, even if they reside in New Jersey, Connecticut, or Long Island. The Hudson River creates a border to New Jersey, but Jersey City, Edgewater, and Fort Lee residents never fail to mention their proximity or time it takes to get into Manhattan when asked, “Where are you from?”
Exchange Place, New Jersey, located across the Hudson, aligned with downtown Manhattan, is essentially an extension of Manhattan. In 1989, the Path Train Station at Exchange Place was renovated, due to economic growth to the surrounding area. Soon after, financial companies began to expand their office space to this area. This development, nicknamed “Wall Street West” resulted in the creation of New Jersey’s only waterfront urban skyline. This expansion is an obvious example of urban sprawl, and in this case, even beyond the New York State border. What made this expansion possible? Clearly, the answer is the Path Train System. A swift ride on this train will land you right in the heart of the World Trade Center in under four minutes. A reverse commute from Manhattan to an outer borough or any destination in the Tri-State area is still considered uncommon. But today, thousands of people make their daily commute into Exchange Place from Manhattan.
I reside in New Jersey, but when asked where I am from, I respond “New York,” based solely on the fact that a network of transportation systems allows me to access any point on the island in less than an hour. If time is used as a measure for proximity, is it safe to assume that the boundaries of New York City are limited not by state borders or physical boundaries, but by the time it takes us to get there?
Exodus, to me, serves as a warning as to what could potentially happen as a result of unsuccessful planning. It calls for a separation of infrastructure within one city, which can only lead to a chaotic urban condition. New York City strives for unity, which is what makes New York so strong. As a cultural and social melting pot, a united system of New York’s infrastructure is the basic element for the city’s success. The expansion and/or creation of new insfrastructure should use the existing network (or landmarks) as a means to do so. If this idea is practiced, negative products of Junkspace are minimized.
Today, New York City is the 3rd largest city in population and the largest city in land area in the world (source: http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_urban_areas_by_population, based on 2009 projections). Proportionally, the cities higher in population (Tokyo and Jakarta, 34.7 and 23.3 million, respectively), compared to their land area (Tokyo-7,835 km2, Jakarta-2,720 km2, New York-11,264 km2), leads us to believe that New York has sufficient space and time for physical growth. However, the problem of overcrowding is inevitable for any major city. The following timeline is my manifesto of New York City’s distant future.
2015
The NYC Commissioner’s office reveals its plan for an Underground Plaza, an extension of Union Square Park directly below. New mixed-use high rises are set to begin construction the following year, so the plaza’s design is intended to alleviate congestion and provide sufficient public and retail space for the many people who work and live in the area. The plan calls for access to the plaza directly from the subway platforms. This design is the first of its kind, as it provides a dramatically new urban experience for the thousands of travelers who pass through Union Square everyday. The design implies future growth, and the architects and planners convey this idea by comparing the existing subway lines to a river that early settlers would build around. The planners set the completion year of Phase I as 2018.
2025
Due to an economic and technological boom, this year is the year many say is the start of the Mass Transit Revolution. A solid framework of underground tunnels has allowed for the implementation of transportation technologies, one of them the high-speed subway. Subway tunnels dating as far back as 1885 have undergone renovation and expansion, providing additional express trains that can cover the island in less than 10 minutes. The Port Authority of NY/NJ, in conjuction with the MTA New York, Long Island Railroad, Metro North, and New Jersey Transit, reveal its master plan for the interlocking network of underground tunnels that unites all of their systems, along with the addition of new lines. The new lines originate from existing MTA and Port Authority hubs and extent to new outer hubs, areas with plans to experience rapid growth. These hubs then connect to each other, introducing a circular element into the mass transit network that allows for inter-borough/region travel without passing through Manhattan. This system is known as the New York Loop. The Loop is designed to not only provide high-speed travel in the tri-state area, but also expand New York City’s boundaries beyond state and county borders. The system facilitates population growth, so in turn, the city plans accordingly. By this time, the Underground Plaza has expanded from 14th Street to Times Square, creating a new social and spatial layer for the city. Plans are underway to provide underground plaza space alongside the East-West L and 7 trains. Many building owners on Broadway have renovated their basement floors to allow for underground retail and public space. By the end of 2025, 7 Starbucks, 1 Apple Store, the largest H&M Store in the world, a Sports Complex created by Chelsea Piers, a Verizon operations station (formerly occupying a window-less high rise in TriBeCa), and OMA’s newest office, are located underground within the plaza between Union Square and Times Square. A trolley system is introduced to accommodate for commuters, and a separate pathway for bikers and runners is successfully utilized.
2028
An announcement is made, that beginning January 1 2030, all vehicles in New York City (the original 5 boroughs) are required-by-law to be 100% free of emissions.
2050
A concern for heavy vehicular traffic in Manhattan leads to a proposal to eliminate delivery trucks from entering the island. With a tentative launch date of January 2, 2057, products, goods, and heavy equipment are to be delivered via “groundport,” an underground system of high-speed conveyer tubes that operates similar to a luggage conveyer system at the airport. Besides alleviating traffic congestion, this system will facilitate a higher volume of trade within and outside New York. This new network of infrastructure is carved out alongside the New York Loop tunnels, and accommodates objects as small as an envelope to as large as a truck container. Office buildings and retailers situated close to a tube can pay a hefty price to install a conveyer that connects their building directly to the tube. Over-sized vehicles can be used only to deliver items between the groundport hub and the destination. Special permission is needed to leave or enter the island with an over-sized vehicle.
2100
The Underground Plaza is fully developed, complete with schools and traffic signals. A revolutionary new transparent material has replaced the roadways to allow for natural light to fully penetrate beneath. The movement of the vehicles and pedestrians above provides more life than ever.
By this time, pedestrian skyways, attached to building facades at the 5th and 10th floors, have been introduced and installed above Park Avenue and Broadway. New buildings now house retail and/or public spaces on the basement, ground, 5th, and 10th floors
The introduction of the “US Loop” is unveiled and travelers (commuters) can now travel from New York to LA in 3 hours. This system unites a network of separate train systems, and does so in a similar manner as the New York Loop united the once-separate train systems of the New York Metro Area. This nationwide system allows for a completely new way of life for Americans, who now have the option to live in Chicago, work a half day in New York, meet friends for lunch in Atlanta, “mag-rail (magnetic rail)” it back to Chicago to scoop the kids and spend the afternoon at Disneyworld; to be back home just in time for a late dinner.
“Where are you from?”
“New York City”
Densification in New York and its impacts
In the future New York will become exceedingly dense as more people continue to migrate near the city. This population increase will result in further building development within New York. As population density increases drastic changes will occur in order to accommodate the needs of a larger population. These changes will be apparent on multiple levels including transportation, sustainability, and regionalism.
The need for space will drastically increase the size of the built environment. In Manhattan this will result in a higher proportion of high-rise to mid-rise buildings, low-rise buildings or townhouses will become a rarity. Manhattan will have taller buildings in all areas of the island creating a skyline across the island that is similar to the skyline of today in Midtown. The outer borough’s will begin to build in a vertical manner reminiscent of Manhattan after all ground space has been consumed. The Metropolitan area of New York will expand outward as more people desire to be closer to the city.
Two basic types of communities will continue to be present in the future. The central area of the city with faster commutes and a smaller area of land for population will continue to be composed of a mixed-use community using mass transit. The communities near the outer edges with more space will continue to be composed of segregated land uses. These outer communities will become more ordered with the addition of a centrally located transit system. Such a system (T.O.D) has been proposed by Peter Calthorpe among others as an alternative to sprawl. In the future some aspects of T.O.D have been installed including the centrally located transit corridor which provides residents with a transportation system to take them to the central business district (C.B.D). However, the automobile still facilitates movement within these communities.
Due to a variety of factors Manhattan will remain a unique center of the New York Metropolitan Area. As Saskia Sassen points out in “The Impact of New Technologies and Globalization on Cities” many businesses opt to locate within or near the city in order to be near service industries residing in the city which are relevant to all forms of business such as accounting services, legal services, etc. Multi-national firms tend to be found within the main district of the city while businesses operating at a regional level tend to stay within proximity to the city and it’s services while also cutting expenses on rent. Due to Manhattan’s land limitations in the future the island will increasingly become home to large multi-national businesses as well as the afore mentioned service industries which they rely upon. Small businesses will exist largely in order to serve these predominant business types. The proportion of Small businesses, civic, and residential buildings will decrease making Manhattan mainly an area dedicated to business and the 9-5 work week. Though largely a work environment which vacates the island after the workday similar to the financial district of today. Accordingly there will be a few citizens who linger or live on the island after the workday has come to an end much like those who live near the financial district today.
Neighborhoods and districts of various character will continue to be seen in order to represent the values of the population. These areas will become more numerous and diverse as the population increases. Some of these areas will cater to different types of user groups. The various districts will be more ephemeral in nature as users will not often reside in theses areas and may be composed of tourists, commuters, or shoppers. Neighborhoods will continue to be a reflection of the culture and values of the residents who reside in the respective community.
The need for space will effectively eliminate the vacant and underutilized areas within the city, urban infill will no longer be a relevant concept in New York. As there will no longer be any vacant land to rely on each lot will be valued as an important piece of the city as a whole. This will improve the maintenance of each individual lot as well as the shared resources between these lots, thereby improving the aesthetic of the city. This concern will pressure government and private developers to take immediate action on addressing and coming to conclusion on local community needs as well as the immediate implementation of these needs. Projects like the World Trade Center rebuilding or Greenpoint waterfront redevelopment projects will not reach a point of standstill over economic or political factors. This will be due the population’s demand for resolution of these projects in a timely manner so their community aims are resolved, and also to help alleviate congestion within the city.
Open Space will be a major concern of everyone living in New York. Radical new innovations will continue to be demanded in order to provide open space without compromising the build-able area of the city needed for habitation. One solution which will become implemented will contain large urban plazas in the sky created by subtracting mass from high-rise buildings. These plazas can be reached by public elevator or the skyways which link buildings. Another dominant trend will be the creation of staggering the lower floors of buildings which will create multiple tiers of open space on these levels which also contain habitable space below.
A marked increase in environmental planning will contribute largely to the physical appearance of New York in the future. The majority of open space including the previously mentioned plazas connected by skyways as well as the staggered open spaces on the lower levels of buildings will be planted. These spaces will be planted in order to respond to environmental impacts caused by the urban population and will help to improve air quality. Many of these urban plazas will also be composed of green roofs and green walls which will help improve the energy efficiency of their respective buildings, a trend which has already begun. The areas of these open spaces as well as sidewalks and other surfaces which are not planted will become composed of pervious surfaces in order to provide absorption of rainwater and help alleviate the strain on the wastewater system.
The importance of sustainability will lead to the mass implementation of many new and existing technologies of sustainability. Photovoltaic panels will become a dominant visual element in the environment with new uses and forms. Most new building projects will be constructed using renewable or recycled products. Wind turbines will be used on a large and small scale throughout the city. On a micro scale sustainable measures will become commonplace as sustainable products become more affordable and efficient. Some of the these technologies include the installation of grey water systems throughout buildings with low flow fixtures in order to conserve water and energy.
The physical structure of New York’s transportation network will be radically changed in order to accommodate the extreme population which will inhabit the city. Transportation will be divided into layers in order to facilitate the movement of such a large population. Skyways will become more commonplace in order to relieve sidewalks of congestion and enable their effective management. There will be several layers of traffic and mass transportation beyond that which currently exists. This will serve to raise the current street level and have multiple levels for transportation. The transportation network will also have different sectors devoted to local or express transportation. The transportation infrastructure, Including roads, subways, and pedestrian traffic paths, will also expand throughout the city. A notable change from the present conditions will be the mass buildup of new connected subway lines which will serve the New Jersey communities. Transportation will also be more environmentally friendly and will offer intelligent solutions to transportation problems. One such solution would be using smaller cars to enable greater numbers of travelers to use the roads. Shared transportation will also exist which will serve to decrease the number of automobiles on the road and numbers manufactured.
This growth in population and structure will increase the complexity of the city, thereby making it harder to have a clear perception or “Image of the city”.
The size of everything including people, transit, etc. will initially confound such a perception of the city. An ever decreasing number of people will be able to comprehend the city instantaneously due to its overwhelming scale and complexity. Many of the people who do will be those in fields with a significant relation to urban issues. This will create more groups, with larger amounts of people, who are involved in urban issues and studies.
This envisioned future is the result of many current societal trends which have gained momentum and increased circulation to include the public at large. The most dominant issues are the interrelated issues of sustainability and environmental concern as well as the current increase towards urbanization. As population grows in the city the more important environmental concerns become, likewise those who are advocates of environmental sustainability will recognize the inherent environmental benefits that come with a society who dwells largely in an urban environment. As these trends become increasingly attractive they will become more intermingled developing a closer relationship with one another.
Referenced sources include:
The Image of the City, Kevin Lynch, 1960
The Impact of New Technologies and Globalization on Cities, Saskia Sassen
The Growth of the city, Ernest W. Burgess
urban densification
In the future New York will continue to see a population increase as the current trend toward urbanization continues. This will result in further building development within New York. As population density increases so to will the built environment. This need will effectively eliminate the vacant and underutilized areas within the city. It will thereby improve the aesthetics of the city, as each lot will be valued as an important piece of the city as a whole. This will improve the maintenance of each individual lot as well as the shared resources between these lots. This type of micro concern will also spread into a macro concern for the neighborhood which will pressure government and private developers to take immediate action on addressing and coming to conclusion on local community needs as well as the immediate implementation of these needs. Projects like the World Trade Center rebuilding or Greenpoint waterfront redevelopment projects will not reach a point of standstill over economic or political factors as the population will demand resolution of these projects in a timely manner so their community aims are resolved, and also to help alleviate congestion within the city.
The need for space primarily in Manhattan as well as the outer boroughs will result in more high-rise development. Manhattan will have taller buildings in all areas of the island creating a skyline across the island that is similar to the skyline of today in Midtown. This congestion will create a strong demand for open space. The majority of open space will be planted parks rather than open plazas. This development can be attributed to the need to utilize all the available buildable space for inhabitation. Furthermore, the natural parks will also provide absorption of rainwater and help alleviate the strain on the wastewater system and reduce the heat island effect.
Transportation will be divided into layers in order to accommodate the extreme population which will inhabit the city. Skyways will become more commonplace in order to relieve sidewalks of congestion and enable their management. There will be several layers of traffic and mass transportation beyond that which currently exists. This will serve to raise the current street level and have multiple levels for transportation. The transportation network will also have different sectors devoted to local or express transportation. Transportation will also be more environmentally friendly and will offer intelligent solutions to transportation problems. One such solution would be using smaller cars to enable greater numbers of travelers to use the roads as well as shared transportation to decrease the number of automobiles on the road and the number of automobiles manufactured.
Fuller’s City
Gregoire Filcidor
We are now looking at New York City from a location that’s not NY. We are viewing New York through binoculars across the Hudson in New Jersey. By the year 2156 New York City is covered in a polyvinyl synthetic lightweight shaped material shaped in a dome-like structure. Like Fuller Buckminster, his dome over part of Manhattan, this dome covers all of New York City. From the Bronx to Staten Island and parts of Long Island there will be a semi-clear cover protecting them. This dome does not just regulate the city’s air quality and climate it was constructed to filter out population, social issues, and other human products. New York will be able to filter out what it believes to be best for itself and its people.
By the year 2105 the population of New York has increased to almost 20,000,000. With this population increased mostly due to immigration from foreign countries. With the increase of the population, the coming of new influences, pollution, decrease in space, more competitiveness, and everything that human existence creates New York decides to close its doors. New York City has always been an antenna to the world, gathering people and their cultures and ideals New York sends back innovations, concepts, ideas, and theories. But by the end of 2112 New York couldn’t keep up with all this information. At that time even architecture and politics were easily swayed and influenced by all the many new ideas. The wave of people also came in a wave of new approaches on medicine techniques and technology, religious practices, and other things that were not easily persuaded to change in the 21st century and earlier. New York City is no longer this antenna that sends new things. New York has become a sponge that absorbs everything and gets bigger and distorted. New York has now decided to become stagnant with the rest of the world to hold its identity. Because of the wave of influences New York has changed its identity over and over like it doesn’t know what to become or look like. And with the progress of new technology and material the construction process has become much more quicker. New York will keep its identity a secret and show it off at the same time. With the dome hovering over the city it is protected from losing its identity and from becoming what the world wants it to be.
Identity conceived as this form of sharing the past is a losing proposition: not only is there – in a stable model of continuous population expansion – proportionally less and less to share, but history also has a n invidious half-life – as it is more abused, it becomes insulting. This thinning is exacerbated by constantly increasing mass of tourists, an avalanche that in a perpetual quest for “character,” grinds successful identities down to meaningless dust.
The Generic City
New York City was a city that had its own style and character and the people within the city matched its demeanor. New York city residents had a swag that was obvious to outsiders. New York was once a city that braced the sky with skyscrapers, showing off to the rest of the world this is the place to be. In the 1930s New York had the tallest building in the world, and lost that title within the same century. New York lost that title with its head high because it was known for its grid and array of big buildings. New York’s identity was architectural and humanistic. The city had its own fundamentals on how it wanted to build and kept.
Identity is like a mousetrap in which more and more mice have to share the original bait, and which, on closer inspection, may have been empty for centuries. The stronger identity, the more it imprisons, the more it resists expansion, interpretation, renewal, contradiction. Identity becomes like a lighthouse – fixed, overdetermined: it can change position or the pattern it emits only at the cost of destabilizing navigation.
The Generic City
This quote was New York City. Its identity was no other and always and stubbornly never wanted to change. There was no other city like this one until the year 2100. With the increase in the global population cities around the world became more like New York with its variations in people.
The industrial Revolution was the catalyst New York’s big structure development that contributed to the city’s identity. The integrating of many cultures (mostly European) help developed New York’s key identity. With the help of economy, and politics skyscrapers were created. Now with the creation of skyscrapers New York and its identity and easily be seen from an external perspective.
From 1895 to 2080 New York was the world’s experimental lab. Everyone idea about architecture, art, and other ideals came through New York City. New York was opened to everyone to explore new ideas from thinkers to artists. New York was not the city that represented America like a lot of people thought but it was a city that represented what America can be, and also represented what the world is. New York’s identity was the world covered or layered with concrete.
The dome was created to combat the increasing problem of population, and everything that a large population contributes to. In the 2150 New York City officials had decided to create a barrier surrounding its borders. The city government raised the city’s resident’s taxes and generated a lot of money through fundraisers, sponsorship and selling parts of the barrier to private sectors. The mayor decided to only give this job to only local design firms, engineering firms, and local contractors. The first idea to barricade the city was to construct a tall masonry wall. But with graffiti artists still plaguing the city with their art city officials believed that was the wrong approach. They believed that the wall will gravitate many graffiti artists within the walls and foreigners will venture to paint the walls. With the inspiration of Buckminster Fuller’s dome over Manhattan, the city came up with an approach in barricading the city. City government and designer decided to cover the city with a large clear dome.
“Bigness has been for nearly a century, condition almost without thinkers, a revolution without program”.
Bigness or Problem at Large
By the middle of the year 2175 the construction of the dome was completed. The dome hovers over the city protecting its citizens from pollution, climate, and protecting the city’s identity from being breached and change again. When the designing the process was taking forth the dome only covered the 5 boroughs. With the need to use and control its structures and the large size of the population he dome started expanding and growing like a blob. The blob took the Hudson River and took back the Statue of Liberty. It took the New Jersey neighborhoods. The blob took the New Jersey cities that were connected to the Lincoln tunnel. It took the George Washington Bridge and all the bridges that connected New York City to Long Island. This dome extended passed the Bronx and entered into Yonkers. The designers of the dome were like the generals, senate and emperor of the Roman Empire taking what land it wants without much of a threat. The civilians of these surrounding cities willingly went along with New York City expansion. It seemed like they knew that they will be part of something great or was given the same chance the Jews were given by the Roman Empire. Everything that was engulfed by the dome became part of New York City. The dome was designed high enough for flying transportation to fly within the city. Over the airports there were electronic gates that were opened fly airplanes. People were still allowed to travel outside city but there were rules. They were not allowed to bring anything back from wherever they traveled to. This included non-U.S. residents and U.S. residents, reading material (besides newspaper), plants, food, photos, and any other digital materials, animals, personal notebooks, any electronics that can contain information from outside New York City.
American sociologist, ideologues, philosophers, French intellectuals, cybermystics, etc… suggests that architecture will be the first “solid that melts into air” through the combined effects of demographic trends, electronics, media, speed, the economy, leisure the death of God, the book, the phone, the fax, affluence, democracy, the end of the Big Story…..
Bigness or Problem of Large
The dome is cleaned every morning and cleaned again every night. It has a self-cleaning technology that turns on automatically. The dome has small crevasses due to the air infiltration systems that allows very little amount of rain from coming in. This helps preserve the building from weathering away and prevents people from having ideas of changing a decaying building. Manhattan is the only part of the city that doesn’t get snow. With this travel with in the island became a lot easier and safer. With this element New York’s economy grew expanded. The effieciency of New York grew and everyone within the city grew financially. From outside the dome is actually like a blob absorbing New York. The dome hovers a structure taking the form of which it’s hovering over. If the structure was big and tall the blob went up to the sky and was wide, if the structure was short and thin the blob went down toward the earth and concaves between the bigger parts of the blob that surrounds it. This organic infrastructure helps the viewers from outside the dome to have an idea of where the buildings are if they had studied New York
City.
Division, isolation, inequality, aggression, destruction, all the negative aspects of the Wall, could be the ingredient of a new phenomenon: architectural warfare against undesirable conditions, in this case London.
Exodus
Within the city of New York it is now what the early Russian communist think would have dreamed of. New York with its large population has become somewhat of a Utopia. With the taller buildings designers gave these buildings passageways that connecting building-to-building bridging the city. This helps the reduction of pedestrians on the ground and helps prevent J-walking. The people enjoy walking more now because they re also hovering in the city. Because of the cultures that came in New York and the population some things had to go.
Merciless progress of the Strip performs a daily miracle, the corrective rage of the architecture is at its most intense. In a continuous confrontation with the old city, existing structures are destroyed by the new architecture, and trivial fights break out between the inmates of the old London and Voluntary Prisoners of the Strip
Exodus
Time Square is no longer needed because there is zero travel to NYC from the outside. Central is also taking away because New York needed the space for new business and apartments. Fish Kills has become the new Central Park. New York now has more public spaces. The New York dome goes 50 miles into the Atlantic Ocean. New York has become a modern Venice but unlike Venice it will not sink into the ocean due to rising water. Boats has become more important way to travel within New York. Underwater passages are also constructed to permit pedestrians to travel without much trouble. Long Island lost chunks of its island do to the New York expansion. New York has now become a sustainable city with water turbines and solar panel on every roof every building.
The inhabitants of the architecture those strong enough to love it, would become its Voluntary Prisoners, ecstatic in the freedom of the their architectural confines.
Exodus
New York’s residents have learned to live with idea of living in a glass prisons. They love the city and they miss the rest of the world all at the same time. With terrorism still infecting the rest of the world New York is safe. But New York is battling a different type of terrorism that does not use explosives, and bullets but uses ideas and influences. New York residents must endure occasional checkups from city officials. This is the price of living in a Utopia.
Visitors and residents will have to get used to checking their liberties like a potentially dangerous bag at a museum of antiquity.
Packaging Utopian Sustainability
New York City: NEXT
A year or so ago, taking a walk down the streets of New York City felt like walking through an enormous construction site. You couldn’t venture out more than a street block without walking underneath one of those tight, dark, and rusting scaffolds with their “Post no Bills” signs, shamelessly posted next to a row of future motion pictures and music album posters. Hard hats were beginning to feel like fashion statements. They even started making them in different colors and shapes, in case the normal white color didn’t match your suit. Old, and purportedly, “useless” buildings with their intricate details were being knocked down to make way for the slender, colorless, and quite often, tasteless glass buildings that were sprawling in their places. In the midst of all this madness, one couldn’t help but wonder; who is occupying all these pricey new spaces? Wait a minute. What’s being done to modernize and update this crumbling city’s infrastructure to accommodate this new wave of New Yorkers that seems to be growing by the minute? From what I personally see; not much is being done, or in other words, not enough. We pretty much have the same amount of train tracks, bridges and highways that were built decades ago, in the meantime the population of the city is sprinting towards its 9th million. Which leads us to question, why city officials are not scrambling around pulling their hairs out trying to catch up with the fast growing population of this city with new, more efficient infrastructure?
I believe that the answer to this question lies in the actual programs being accommodated within several of these new buildings and in the technologies used for their construction and operation. The combination of each of these, in a way, will help eliminate the need to majorly upgrade the city’s infrastructure, by eradicating the need to use it in the first place. Smart choice but, what are the implications?
In recent years, the city of New York has been slowly encouraging the construction of buildings with multiuse programs. The reason is fairly simple; to keep the residents within the property lines of what I would like to call Mega Structures, for lack of a better word, by providing them with all they would need throughout any normal day; food, work recreational, shopping etc. in addition, New York City has lately been encouraging and sometimes even mandating sustainable architecture for new or renovated buildings. This seems to be leading towards bigger structures that would operate as cities within themselves while, at the same time, having the least impact possible on the city’s infrastructure. Given the amount and diversity of the program to be incorporated within these structures and given the fact that they would have to be self sustainable, I would imagine that their footprints would have to cover at least about 10 city blocks. A building this large can reach an unfathomable height. This, of course, wouldn’t have been conceivable a few years ago. However, given the technological advances we have been witnessing in the last decade or so, this scenario is highly possible. this would lead me to ask three main questions:
- How would this affect the architecture of the buildings within itself?
According to his “Theory of Bigness” essay, Rem Koolhaas believes that once a building reaches a certain scale, it can “no longer be controlled by a single architectural gesture, or even by any combination of architectural gestures”. To avoid this, I would imagine that architects and designers would lean towards oversimplifying the architecture of their buildings to the point where they become banal structures and start all looking alike, something we are already starting to see. Koolhaas also points out that “in Bigness, the distance between core and envelope increases to the point where the façade can no longer reveal what happens inside”. This would entail oversimplifying the facades as well, what we would be left with are boxes, another thing we are starting to see. Moreover, who cares what the outside looks like if the point is to keep everyone in the inside in the first place. At that point, a repetition of the same façade would be unquestionable but even desirable. As for the interior of these structures, practicality and ease of movement will be the common denominators. The easier it would be to travel within each of these look alike boxes the most successful it would be considered, another thing that could be achieved through simplifying the architecture. In that case, it would be safe to conclude that these buildings would be built per the module that would work best thus exposing the redundancy of architecture at that point, or as Rem Koolhaas concluded: “preempting architecture’s actual disappearance”. At the same time, we have to keep in mind that each of these Mega Structures will be operating completely independently from the others, which means they will no longer be “part of any urban tissue”, which leads us to our second question.
- How would this affect the architecture of the city as a whole?
Let us take each of the five city elements introduced by Kevin Lynch in his chapter “The City Image and its Elements”, and apply them to our futuristic beloved city.
- Paths: recognized by Lynch as “the predominant city element” they were defined as “channels” along which movement occurs, including streets, bridges, trains… These would be practically redundant in our city since each building is independent from the other ones. Since each one of them offers exactly what the next one has to offer, the need to travel from one building to another is close to nonexistent.
- Edges: defined as the “boundaries between two phases, linear breaks in continuity: shores, railroad cuts, edges of developments, wall”. Except for the natural edges like the two rivers that board New York City, all edges would look the same in a city constructed by copying the same module over and over again, thus nullifying its main purpose as “organizing features”. This element wouldn’t completely be lost but its importance will be minimized or restricted to a fewer areas.
- Districts: which are the “medium-to-large sections of the city…Always identifiable from the inside, they are also used for exterior reference if visible from the outside” We will again be safe to add them to the list of completely lost elements for two reasons. The conformity of the building size throughout our future city and to the unfeasibility to recognize them from the outside in a city where all buildings look alike.
- Nodes: these are “strategic spots in a city in which the observer can enter, and which are the intensive foci to and from which he is traveling” Lynch goes on to explain that nodes may be junctions or spots where the traveler can clearly see a change in the fabric of his surrounding, at the same time they could be a convergence point of two or more different characteristically identifiable objects or elements. One could argue both ways when it comes to this specific element for the simple fact that its definition is too broad. We can predict that the points of entry to the city will be mainly unchanged but at the same time there will not be any two object with different characteristics within the city.
- Landmarks: identified as another “point-reference” they are mainly perceived as external elements, “they are simply defined physical object: Building, sign, store or mountain” we’ll be inclined to shelve this element as well since we will again be restricted to natural elements and points of entry to the city.
Thus, we can easily see that we are left with less than one of Lynch’s elements out of the total five. Which would incline us to conclude that the city would be identifiable only if we are standing at its edges, and that’s only if the elements, visible at that point, are not tampered with themselves by that time. At the same time one could almost argue that all these elements would be easily indentified within each one of our Mega-structures. But that would totally be dependent on the design of their interiors and it would not be solely specific for each building since the traveler can identify the exact same elements in another building. This would reinforce the idea that each one of these buildings would operate and look like it’s its own city, except that the traveler can’t make a difference between them. Each one of them is completely detached from the “urban tissue”, and does not contribute in any way to the city as whole. But maybe they don’t need to. Maybe each one of these building will be better off operating individually. Individuals within each of them won’t need to interact with others outside of their own walls. Consequently, the city streets would be mostly deserted because of this seclusion. This leads us to our next question.
- How would this affect our social life and interactions with each others?
It is also interesting to imagine this aspect of it. How would the residents of each building interact with other residents from another one? Would they need to in the first place? Each one of these buildings will host millions of people given the buildings inconceivable height and footprint. Why would any individual have the need to go outside of their building for socializing? Would residents from each one of these buildings feel any connection to New York City as a hole, or will they be the residents of a numbered building only? To investigate this a little further I would like to refer to H.D Kitto’s “Polis” essay.
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