Market Urbanism

Liberalizing cities | From the bottom up

“Market Urbanism” refers to the synthesis of classical liberal economics and ethics (market), with an appreciation of the urban way of life and its benefits to society (urbanism). We advocate for the emergence of bottom up solutions to urban issues, as opposed to ones imposed from the top down.

Before the landmarks…

By

The other day I was stumbling around Wikipedia when I found pictures of what was apparently the first iteration of New York’s Grand Central train station, called Grand Central Depot. The “depot” opened in 1871 and was built in the neo-Renaissance style that was popular back then (as opposed to the final, neoclassical incarnation), and stood for less than 30 years. It was partly torn down and reconstructed in 1899, and then totally demolished “in phases” between 1903 and 1913 to make way for today’s Grand Central Terminal.

1880 photograph of Grand Central Depot, from Wikipedia

This got me thinking about the old Pennsylvania Station whose demolition was a catalyst for the modern preservationist movement. Like nearly every big old building in New York, it was of course not the first building to stand there – development in cities during the prewar era was as much about redevelopment as it was about building in greenfield sites. It was a given that building would come down and new ones would be built – a city that’s been disrupted in most American downtowns. (Midtown Manhattan is of course one of the few places in the U.S. where this still happens – the Drake Hotel was of course torn down a few years ago by Harry Macklowe, on the site of what is now 432 Park Ave., and the Hotel Pennsylvania across from Penn Station will likely be replaced with an office tower once the market comes back.)

Anyway, I put out a call on Twitter for pre-Penn Station history, and lo and behond @enf alerted me to a panel at an exhibit at the Transit History Museum in Brooklyn, which I managed to find some pictures from on Flickr. Here’s a wide shot of the panel (though you can zoom in pretty close), and here’s some of the text that I could make out:

After extensive investigation, a site for Pennsylvania Station was chosen on the West Side, spanning Seventh to Tenth Avenues and 31st to 33rd Streets. The are was known as the Tenderloin, an infamous neighborhood with brothels, sloons, casinos and dancehalls. Social reformers referred to the are as Satan’s Circus and hoped for a new, affluent neighborhood. The excavation from the station and yards began in 1903, following years of negotiating burdensome New York City bureaucracy. Six city blocks were razed, and an enormous 58′ deep hope was excavated to lay tracks. A small gauge railroad carted away tons of fill. Scaffolding propped up the Ninth Avenue elevated railway, and a viaduct was created to bridge Eighth Avenue across the “cut.” Observers likened the project to the creation of the Panama Canal. Construction on the great station began in 1906.

Funny how “social reformers” nowadays generally do the exact opposite – try to keep poor people in central areas, no matter who owns the property!

Here’s a piece of newspaper propaganda in favor of slum clearance for Penn Station:

This also reminds me of Curbed’s feature on the old, Gilded Age mansions around Central Park that were demolished, some after only twenty years of use (man, do I wish today’s zoning code allowed redevelopment of buildings from the ’90s!), to make way for much bigger luxury apartment houses. Surely each one of those mansions would have been designated a historical landmark by now if it were still around, but then again most preservationists probably also feel that way about the buildings that replaced them.

There’s a general sense among preservationists and the public that redevelopment (which implies demolition) was okay before WWII, since the new buildings were also “beautiful,” but things built these days just don’t live up. But I wonder, how many thousands of landmark-worthy buildings are we missing because of the fear that glass and steel can never live up to brick and limestone?

Comments

  1. I have no great love for the NYC LPC or the (ab)use of Landmarking in the city, as you well point out.  However, there is a general problem with construction in the city today. It is that we build very poorly, and there is a sufficient quantity of real estate builders such that for every 15 CPW, there are dozens of “Caledonias” – (it’s that butt ugly generic building on the high line).  Certainly the fear of the Fedders building drives community groups to pursue landmarking in the boroughs.  When there’s a lowest common denominator market for new construction and development, it’s understandable that people would rally around the old.

    Landmarking was initially conceived as a way to protect individual structures of architectural merit or cultural importance.  It’s pretty easy to debate the architectural/historic merit of an individual structure.  Landmark districts are another story, especially as they proliferate through the city.  I wish it were true that abolishing landmark districts would allow for new developments of architectural merit.  However, although there are many exceptions, it would be a mistake to rely on the building community in NYC to produce good buildings with any sort of regularity.

  2. PART ONE (of two)
     
    Stephen Smith wrote:
     
    There’s a general sense among preservationists and the public that redevelopment (which implies demolition) was okay before WWII, since the new buildings were also “beautiful,” but things built these days just don’t live up.  But I wonder, how many thousands of landmark-worthy buildings are we missing because of the fear that glass and steel can never live up to brick and limestone?
     
    Benjamin Hemric writes:
     
    As someone who believes that modern architecture — especially in the aggregate — produces disaffection and alienation from urbanism among the general public, and as someone who’s been an observer of the landmark scene in New York City since the 1960s (and a participant since the 1970s), I think the situation is actually far more complicated – and paradoxical! — than as described in the above comment.
     
    For one thing, most preservations in New York City (particularly the influential elites who promote and also administer landmarks preservation) are – and always have been – ardent (and I mean ARDENT) supporters of modern architecture (or what I call “orthodox modern architecture”).  Two examples that come immediately to mind are Ada Louise Huxatable, who was the very influential architectural critic of the “New York Times” in the 1960s, and the Municipal Art Society which promoted the original landmarks law and lead the charge to save Grand Central Terminal, but has (as far as I can recall) always been and, more importantly, still is a big advocate of orthodox modern architecture.  (Part of the explanation is that most of the people prominent in the preservation community are connected with the field of architecture, which, except for a very short period in the late 1970s, has been dominated by orthodox modernists since the end of WWII.)
     
    For evidence of the pro-modernist stance of influential preservationists one only has to look at the kind of alterations / additions that are allowed – and sometimes virtually mandated – by preservationists.  Often something that is an “modern” that contrasts with the original is favored over something that looks too close to the original.  (Look, for example, at some of the buildings approved for the Greenwich Village Historic District.)  Look at the unworthy (in my opinion) orthodox modern buildings that have been designated landmarks over the years, e.g., the Mobil Oil Building on East 42nd St.  Also, there are a number of prominent controversies that come to mind which also illustrate the pro-modernist stance of the preservationist community: the modern addition to the Harvard Club, the Hearst Building, and 2 Columbus Circle, Pier 17 in the South Street Seaport.
     
    In other words, while I think orthodox modern architecture (especially in the aggregate) tends to be anti-urban and anti-New York, I can vouch from experience that this opinion is relatively rare among preservationists in New York City.  Perhaps the most prominent proponents of this viewpoint (or something similar) are the writer Tom Wolfe (especially with his two books, “the Painted Word” and “From Our House to Bauhaus”) and the “City Journal.”  (However, I suspect that I am more pro-modern architecture than either.)  And, it’s great to see that a number of people have recently expressed somewhat similar viewpoints in comments both here at “Market Urbanism” and at the “City Journal.”  But this is rare!
     
    (To be continued.)
     
    Benjamin Hemric 
    Wed., June 20, 2012, 11:30 a.m.

  3. PART TWO (of two)
     
    Then what explains the current mania for preservation – especially with regard to historic districts — which I too think has been far overdone?  I think what people are most directly against is change, per se, especially “unplanned” change (changes that don’t fit into those approved by orthodox urban planning).  (In other words, they don’t truly accept the kind of urbanism espoused by Jane Jacobs.)  And people who live in historic districts and who fear change (and true urbanism) have latched onto historic preservation as a way to stop change (and true urbanism) – as a second line, so to speak, behind zoning.
     
    But I also think that a good number of people who support preservation are INDIRECTLY influenced by the disaffection and alienation that orthodox modernism creates (especially in the aggregate).  They see streetscapes created by modernism and they say “we don’t want our district to be like this.”

    However, truth be told, it is also true that you could probably show many who support historic preservation and support historic districts the most beautiful “historic” apartment houses, factories, office buildings in Greenwich Village or the Upper East Side, etc. and they still would be against it.  So, basically they are against change, against high-density, and against mixed-uses and the preservation of historic architecture is just a tactic.
     
    (End.)
     
    Benjamin Hemric
    Wed., June 20, 2012, 11:40 a.m.

  4. You’ve basically answered your own questions.

    Landmarks laws did not exist before WWI because the vast majority of new buildings were as good or better than what preceded them. They tore down the depot (which was good) and put up the current GST (which is way better). Landmarks laws exist everywhere now because the vast (vast,vast, vast, vast) majority of new buildings are worse than what they replace. (This is not the case when something from now replaces something from 1975 but it is when something new replaces something from pre-WWI and, in most cases, the inter-war years).

    Landmark laws (along with other intese zoning restrictions) will not go away — despite the utterly enormous costs they impose upon society’s living standards — until the planning and building industries fix the astonishing problem that makes them build nothing but crap. And there’s no indication whatever that they will fix that. The vast majority of architects think their profession has no problem, that the problem is with the overwhelming majority of the world that hates the crap they foist upon us.

    This is one of the truly big problems of modern life. Building restrictions increase real estate costs so much in many areas that they probably add a decade or more onto the time that each person must work in order to achieve a desired standard of living. But a decade of toil is far better than putting up with Paris leveled and replaced with what Le Corbusier wanted.

    This is also one of the truly big failures of a market that has no obvious reasons why it should not function properly. Given the number of architects/builders/etc. can a competitive balance emerge in which they all build crap? Why would it be utterly impossible today for the market to rebuild a city that people really, really love, like Pari?. Paris is largely a 19th century creation. Can you think of anything else (that’s important) where products have become far worse since the 19th century? This is something a blog called Market Urbanism needs to struggle with more.

    *Even if architecture/city planning were saved, one more big problem would need to be solved before building restrictions fell away and everyone could afford nice housing: insulating functional people (especially their kids) from non-functional people.

  5. Great article. The public has a very short cultural memory and usually “blames” modern architecture for the state of our cities today, forgetting that we have been building up and tearing down for centuries.

  6. aka_Scoop, as a practicing architect, I can report that there is a consensus in the profession that we build crap, especially in the commercial and housing sectors. It’s not because architects are all bad designers, but it is because there is inevitably a race to the bottom to make buildings for the lowest possible cost. Lowest cost buildings are driven by bare minimum code compliance and minimum acceptable materials – what the builder can get away with. Quality buildings tend to be those built by public entities and authorities and those commercial developers who will operate and maintain what they build. The budgets for these buildings tend to be substantially higher – both design and construction. Design criteria for these buildings are often far beyond code compliance, and both the design and construction requirements are more intense. A good quality building will be designed for durability, efficiency, low-maintenance and low cost of ownership. A poor quality building will be designed to the bare minimum code requirements for the lowest possible cost. In a real estate bubble economy, guess what quality building will get built by those seeking to make a buck or two in real estate?

  7. While there were likely a number of “typos” and poorly written sentences in my previous comments, I’d like re-edit one section of the above 6/20/12, 11:40 a.m. comment in particular, as the current wording makes my meaning somewhat unclear. Here is a clearer (hopefully!) version:

    However, truth be told, it is also true that you could show to many of those who support landmark designations and historic districts the most beautifully designed “historic” high-rise apartment houses, factories, and office buildings in Greenwich Village or the Upper East Side, etc., and they still probably would be against the construction of new such structures in their “historic” neighborhoods. It seems to me that what they are “really” against is change, added density, and mixed uses — not the style of architecture. The preservation of historic architecture is just a tactic to prevent change and preserve homogeneity and pre-auto “suburbanism.”

    Benjamin Hemric
    Wed., June 20, 2012, 7:00 p.m.

  8. I’m sure cost is an important factor, but I’m not really convinced it’s all of it or even the majority of it.

    1. Cost considerations existed before WWI. Actually they existed to a wildly greater extent because we were much, much poorer. Yet they built great buildings. (I will grant you that technical limitations actually provided some advantages here. There was no AC, so windows had to open. Artificial light was poor, so everything needed to be near a window and buildings could not be too bulky. But still.)

    1a. People don’t only like spectacular old buildings like Grand Central. They love the naked profit maximizers too. Take the Adams Express building on lower Broadway (or any of the offices there from the same period). They’re nothing but brick and windows and a very few decorations. But the proportions are just right and they’re elegant without trying at all. (In a lot of ways, these are the best buildings because they fit with other buildings. A city can have only a few stars before it’s visual chaos. When people think of Paris they think of the stars buildings but what the really love is the cohesive environment created by the endless streets of plain, anonymous but elegant six story buildings. No one will ever know the architects of any of these buildings, because they simply don’t matter, which isn’t a concept that sits well with architects.)

    2. Designs that are hugely praised by the architecture establishment are often (though certainly not always) wildly ugly: Tate Modern, Bird’s Nest, CCTV building, Seattle library. I’d continue but I’d vomit.

    3. Even when you like the design of a building, the architect often uses land in a way that kills the city. Open plazas are still popular with you lot. Leon Krier and Jane Jacobs both began writing half a century ago and most of your profession — particularly the ones who advise cities on their zoning codes — still don’t get it. Look at the proposals for Atlantic Yards in Brooklyn or Hudson Yards in Manhattan.

    4. Any use of older styles that isn’t ironic is derided. And this, I think, may be the biggest problem. Architects want theirs to be a creative profession. But architects had already discovered most of what makes a pleasing building by around 1500. So the perceived choice is to assemble everything from long discovered rules (and thus make good buildings) or be creative and fail. I don’t actually think that is the choice. Beaux Art is obviously very classical, but no one would look at Grand Central or the Customs House and think either that they were built in ancient Rome or that the architects hoped anyone would think they were. They were both classical and yet wholly unique and I know their architects because they did brilliant work. But if you put up either today you’d be derided as peddling kitsch. That’s a broken profession.

  9. SOME MORE THOUGHTS ON THE IMPETUS FOR HISTORIC PRESERVATION IN OUR CITIES (one of a series?)

    aka_Scoop wrote:

    Landmarks laws did not exist before WWI because the vast majority of new buildings were as good or better than what preceded them.

    Benjamin Hemric writes:

    While I personally agree that much of what is built today — especially by big name architects — is likely to be worst (urbanistically) than what it replaced, and while there may be SOME truth to the theory that people in the old days didn’t mind the destruction of wonderful old buildings because they were replaced by even more wonderful “new” buildings that were nevertheless built in traditional styles (e.g., Grand Central Depot, Grand Central Station, Grand Central Terminal, etc.), I don’t think this is really the “real” story as to why landmark laws didn’t exist in the past. For one thing, a lot of wonderful old buildings were also replaced by not so wonderful new buildings. This can be seen, for instance, in one of the seminal books for the historic preservation movement, “Lost New York” (1968) by Nathan Silver. (The 1968 book is based upon an earlier exhibit which has been credited with generating support for NYC’s 1965 Landmark Law.)

    Rather it seems to me that the thinking in the old days — among Americans — was as follows: a) old buildings have little use and value — they are throw away and “disposable”; b) old buildings can’t easily be reused for new functions — so it must be out with the old and in with the new; c) nothing in New York (or America) is really historic or worthwhile any way (American inferiority complex); d) buildings from previous generations are actually old-fashioned and bad — they represent a time when New York and America were poor and culturally backward (in other words, many people were ashamed or embarrassed by older styles); e) gov’t has no right to stop people from tearing down buildings on their own property.

    Among those supporting historic preservation the new “in” ideas were as follows: a) Americans should learn that buildings are NOT throw away and “disposable” (“Only in America do we have little regard for the past. If only we could be as wise as Europeans”); b) many old buildings can be adaptively reused for new functions — we don’t have to tear down the old to make way for progress; c) we in New York and America have had a misguided inferiorty complex and thus we haven’t truly appreciated our own native geniuses; d) we have too easily been intolerant of the architecure of our parents (Jane Jacobs has said this a number of times, more or less — that children and grandchildren tend to be “ruthless” about the architecture of their parents’ generation; e) gov’t has the right and duty to promote civic greatness and beauty.

    Plus, if I don’t get the chance to say it elsewhere, it should be emphasized that the biggest supporters of landmark preservation in the 1960s (e.g., preservation of Pennsylvania Station, etc.) were architects who were themselves modernists. Look at those who supported the preservation of Pennsylvania Station. It’s like a “who’s who” of modern architects in New York (e.g., Philip Johnson, etc.). But then again, at that time “all” architects were modernists. This was the height of modernism — the anti-modernist movement didn’t really take hold until the mid-1970s.

    Benjamin Hemric
    Wed., June 20, 2012, 8:50 p.m.

  10. If it’s a matter of cost, wouldn’t you expect the highest-end buildings to be better-built? Their sale prices are at a premium over construction cost, and those of Midtown office buildings are even more so.

  11. Cost has probably always been an issue, but the exact nature of costs, has, I think changed very much. Labor used to be much cheaper, and so labor-intensive styles and techniques much more practical.

    I agree that it’s harmful when architectural fashion scares architects away from something nice just because it’s not fashionable.

    [BTW, your list of things you think are ugly is pretty darn wacky… are you Kunstler?!]

  12. Aren’t they?

    I’ve noticed that buildings in the most fashionable areas of Tokyo are often quite palpably nicer (both architecturally and in terms of build-quality) than those in less fashionable areas…

    I’ve always assumed this was because the high cost of building in the former areas made good architecture and construction relatively less costly.

  13. Well I won’t defend a profession that has limited itself to providing something called “design.” Architects today are not the master builders of yesteryear, but only one of a number of paid consultants that help to make buildings. It’s also true that today’s buildings are more complicated to design and construct than in years past. They are more complex, and involve the integration of numerous complex systems. Contrast this to your 19th C. Paris example, where it was likely that the “architect” was just as likely to be the man in charge of construction as he was to be the man who drew the plans. He also probably had an interest in the property. The profession of architecture is a relatively new construct – it didn’t really exist in the 1500’s when, as you say, people had already figured out how to make a god building.

    Anyhow, the problem with the complexity of today’s construction is that people don’t do it very well. It’s true there are big budget productions where no expense is spared, but these are a tiny minority of buildings. Leaving aside the work of starchitects and large public and commercial projects, the state of vernacular construction today is pretty awful. If you need some proof of this, just google “fedders building”. You seem to be saying that people (who presumably are not architects) love old architecture – indeed, they do. People appreciate craftsmanship and don’t understand integration. They are comfortable with the halcyon past, where building was simple, closer to hand-work, and that’s why they all want to landmark it.

  14. Eh. If the cost of construction were the only thing that contributed to real estate value that might be true, but there are other, probably more significant factors, mostly location and acquisition costs.

  15. “Labor used to be cheaper” I hear this argument a lot about architecture, that it had to get radically simpler because labor costs rose. Two responses: 1. Look back at what I’m saying about liking simple buildings, Adams Express, the typical generic Paris building. They are not labor intensive. 2. I don’t even really buy the argument as it applies to the lack of new palaces like Grand Central. The rising cost of labor is why we invent labor saving devices. Everything we mfg. from cars to washing machines to everything else hasn’t gotten simpler because we could not afford their original designs. They’ve gotten monumentally more complex, while getting cheaper at the same time, because we can invent machines to do stuff for us.

    “Ugly buildings” I picked things that consistently appeared on two or three lists of “best buildings 2000-2010” that I’d guess more than 80 percent of the world would despise despite uniform and astonishingly enthusiastic praise from architects and architectural critics who are supposed to be on our side.

  16. “I’d guess more than 80 percent of the world would despise”

    I’m sure you would. I have less confidence in the universality of your tastes.

  17. I don’t really think you doubt my assertion as much as you claim to. You just know I cannot back up any numerical assertions about these individual buildings because no one does statistically significant building-by-building polls of public opinion. (Actually, in light Googling, it’s surprising how very, very few valid polls there are of general architectural taste. It’s like the people who run the arts pages at prestige publications and employ critics to say how wonderful this stuff is really don’t want to know if their critics are correct. You don’t even find any studies on public tastes from architecture schools on Google scholar. It’s like they’re not interested doing actual academic work, i.e. discerning any valid evidence of immutable preferences [if there are any] that might make architecture a bit of a science as well as an art. Funny that, particularly given that any such poll would be done by the architectural establishment, which would make rigging pretty easy. The numbers must be really awful.)

    Edit: The first bit comes across way snider than I intended. Let me rephrase and say that while I obviously have no valid data on the specific buildings I mentioned, I assume you’re smart enough to realize that, in general, big majorities of the general public not only dislike modern architecture as a whole but many of the buildings that are most praised by the architecture establishment. Taste in architecture is not universal, but it does seem to be something a huge percentage of people inherently share, which is why you rarely hear anyone calling Paris or Venice ugly.

    Also, to clarify my position, I’m not arguing in any way that all modern buildings are crap. I like many of them very much. What I am arguing is that the average quality of buildings today has plummeted from the levels of 100 years ago. Plummeted. At all levels. Far worse, the ability of the construction community to assemble buildings into anything resembling a good urban environment has basically disappeared. I literally cannot think of large plot of land developed from a blank slate since WWII that is a world-class neighborhood today. None. Battery Park City is less bad than most of it. But it’s still terrible compared to the rest of Manhattan. Huge market failure for reasons I cannot fathom.

  18. SOME MORE THOUGHTS ON THE IMPETUS AND RATIONALE FOR HISTORIC PRESERVATION IN NYC (second in a series?)

    Stephen Smith wrote [added numbering is mine — BH]:

    This also reminds me of Curbed’s feature on the old, Guilded Age mansions . . . that were demolished, some after only twenty years of use . . . to make way for much bigger luxury apartment houses. [1] Surely each one of those mansions would have been designated a historical landmark by now if it were still around, but [2] then again most preservationists probably also feel that way about the buildings that replaced them.

    Benjamin Hemric writes:

    Regarding [1]: While I do think that the preservation movement has become emboldened and maybe even reckless and loosened its standards over the years, I also think it’s important to recognize that part of the impuse of preserving landmarks is to save things that have become scarce treasures, things that have become members of an “endangered species,” so to speak. As a result, “historically valuable” buildings become more landmark worthy as their type becomes scarcer.

    Thus it seems to me that part of the thinking behind landmark preservation has been (at least it was in the the “early” years) to preserve one or two examples of a particular building type (preferably the best examples) — kind of a Noah’s Ark approach to landmark preservation. The rationale is to save part of our cultural heritage as human beings and preserve examples of human cultural achievement — and, from a Jane Jacobs perspective, to help preserve diversity too. Aso, as Jane Jacobs points out, part of the value of a landmark is that is it scarce — literally a landmark — and the more common a structure is the less valuable it is as a landmark.

    For example, even I would probably support designating as a landmark a “common” (but classic) old-law dumbell tenement building if [and this is an important “if”] it were one of only a handful left in New York City. Old-law dumbell tenements are an important part of the history of New York City, and if a structure were the only one left it would, indeed, be a true landmark in my opinion, by virtue of its singularity. As common as they are now, however, it might seem silly to designate an old-law dumbell tenement building a landmark. (But then again, maybe one shouldn’t wait too long — people wanting to preserve the Levittown tract house have, apparently, waited too long, and now there are, as I understand it, no more unmodified originals left.)

    In the early days of historic preservation, when landmark laws were not as well established and accepted as they are now and people were more cautious, I think this Noah’s Art mentality was more common — and may even have predominated in the landmarks preservation community. Now, it seems to me this mentality has, for one reason or another (see more directly below), become less common.

    With regard to [2]: When there are many, many versions of a treasure, however, one can afford to be selective and pick and choose among them. And generally speaking preservationists in the past have been kind of picky about which ones to choose. Now, perhaps because of a fear of unplanned change, fear of increased density, fear of mixed uses or fear of orthodox modern architecture and the streetscapes created by a proliferation of such architecture, preservationists seem less selective.

    With regard to both [1] and [2]: Also it seems to me that our society has developed an “Academy Awards / Hall of Fame / Pulitzer Prize / Presidential Election / American Idol” mentality. Now people seem to think that each and every “good” building, especially one designed by a currently popular architect (dead or alive), is deserving of landmark protection — as though not choosing such a building is saying that the building is bad architecture. So landmark designation has devolved into a culture war: my taste is better than your taste; my favorite architect is better than your favorite architect; etc. And people seem to have lost sight of an important original purpose of landmark preservation — to save rare, positive examples of architecture or urbanism.

    Benjamin Hemric
    Thurs., June 21, 2012, 9:05 p.m.

  19. “A city can have only a few stars before it’s visual chaos. When people think of Paris they think of the stars buildings but what the really love is the cohesive environment created by the endless streets of plain, anonymous but elegant six story buildings. No one will ever know the architects of any of these buildings, because they simply don’t matter, which isn’t a concept that sits well with architects.”

    Great posts and points, aka_Scoop! I think there is a lot of truth to the argument that a lot of today’s “starchitecture” (nostalgic
    neomodernism) is indeed broadly disliked or at best appreciated merely for its shallow stunt value. I happen to think the buildings Scoop cited are awful too. (Not all of them are necessarily ugly – some are mildly interesting as abstract art – but abstract art doesn’t make for good urbanism!) Do architects realize that an urban environment is not an esoteric, self-referential MoMA sculpture garden? People actually live on those streets! They’re not mere ants surrounding an aerial shot of a blob or snide ghosted hipsters (as per the ubiquitous architecture renderings) laughing at some “ironic” intellectual pun in some unfathomable architectural stunt! Every blank wall, every banal glass curtain wall, every scruffy, ownerless “green space,” every desolate “plaza,” every sinister technoid form destroys the streetscape a little! Maybe these guys should read Whyte’s The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces or Jacobs’ Great Streets?

    I also don’t buy the “labor costs” argument. What with all the low-paid illegals and labor-saving tools/technology used in modern construction, we have far more flexibility in building beautifully than we ever did in the past. (And the detail on many old buildings was mass-produced too!) Rather, I argue that the “ornament is a crime” belief still largely infects the decaying architecture profession. Many of them also seem to be violently allergic to history, an allergy that the public by and large does not seem to share (judging by the vast majority of non-Modernist houses in suburbia out there).

    I think the contemporary preservation mania mostly boils down to the public’s lack of confidence in the future (when it comes to the built environment at least). If everything new is palpably inferior to the surviving prewar stuff (this is blatantly obvious to me!), then wouldn’t you dread the arrival of more awful new stuff? I think the preservation mania wasn’t nearly as strong in the 50s-60s because a lot of old stuff was still around – a quick scan of Hitchcock’s Vertigo shows that prewar San Fran was still largely intact in the 50s. But as the decades crept by and more and more old stuff was razed for throwaway new crap, maybe we gradually realized we were uglifying our cities. So the desperation to save every scrap of anything old only grew stronger. Build new stuff that is palpably more lovable and affectionate than the old stuff, and I think the preservation mania will fade away.

    “Can you think of anything else (that’s important) where products have become far worse since the 19th century? This is something a blog called Market Urbanism needs to struggle with more.”

    Exactly. Wonderful and insightful as the posts on MU are, sometimes a desirable urban fabric is a lot more than cold statistics, econometric analyses, and specialized, abstract theories/models. Aesthetics, their relation to human comfort and our sense of security, building/street scales, beauty, and delight all play a role in determining the value and desirability of an urban fabric too. These things are not relativist “in the eye of the beholder” issues (which they seem to be dismissed as by some intellectuals) – there are real consensuses over them!

    Maybe there are some intensely desirable features in old buildings and neighborhoods that many crave (judging by their insane prices) that all the cold econometric rationalizations and dismissals can’t clear away! Putting tons of throwaway glass towers with short “design lives” in Greenwich Village, for example, probably would make that neighborhood more affordable, because its current midrise charm would be destroyed and it’d be a less desirable neighborhood. But surely we can’t tell the people living there now that they have to sacrifice the lowrise/midrise grace of that area for the sake of “affordability” for an abstract greater good?

    Rather than resigning ourselves to an urban life of cheap but ugly skyscraper forests in highly-desirable metros and forcing ourselves to tolerate spartan aesthetics for the sake of affordability, we probably need to find a way to make traditional lowrise/midrise development (of the kind that characterizes many of our most cherished historic districts) more feasible and affordable again. This’ll require actual design and not simplistic (IMO) Glaeseresque econometric modeling (“building up is always better”). We should, after all, be building environments for human pleasure and delight, and not mainly for abstract concepts (affordability/efficiency/economy/compact skyscraper utopia/etc.) that might compromise human pleasure!

    “How many thousands of landmark-worthy buildings are we missing because of the fear that glass and steel can never live up to brick and limestone?” (from the original article)

    Right now? None. Yes, glass and steel can be beautiful and artful, but when’s the last time those materials have been treated with a lavish caress, like this? Today’s cold technoid shards and slabs don’t resonate with me at all – to me they’re the architectural equivalent of Tiananmen Square – overblown/overscaled, placeless, desolate, antihuman, forbidding. I realize this is a hardly a universal feeling, but I suspect enough people feel this way to be driven to resist new slabs (driving a lot of urban NIMBYism) and to fight ferociously to save the old stuff. It’s also probably a good idea to think about the longevity and durability of the modern/postwar crap and compare it to the prewar stuff – will it endure for as long, or will it need costly renovations every other decade? Interestingly enough, there already are preservation wars over 20-30 year old Brutalist buildings that are falling apart. This time it’s largely the academics (the architects) who want to save this crap, but the public couldn’t care less.

  20. Costs have nothing to do with it, it is all about architectural incompetence.

    There have been countless awful postmodernist “designs” that add to costs while insulting the public over the past decades.

    There has been one well-made skyscraper in New York, 15 Central Park West, that became “the architectural equivalent of the highest grossing movie of all time”.

    It’s not about costs, it’s about the intelligence of the details (see http://emergenturbanism.com/2009/06/21/the-genesis-of-complex-geometry ). Architects waste their time on stupid intellectually-bankrupt ideas and don’t spend enough time making parking lots and restrooms wonderful, which would teach them both humility and love of their craft.

  21. aka_Scoop
    wrote:

    This is also one of the truly big failures of a market that has no obvious reasons why it should not function properly . . . This is something a blog called Market Urbanism needs to struggle with more.

    Benjamin Hemric writes:

    As mentioned previously, I think that at least part of the “market failure” that you’re referring to – at least in NYC – is not actually a product of “market failure” but rather a product of the political process and the “hidden hand” of “government intervention” (guided by architectural “elites”) instead. For instance, the original 1916 NYC Code, which regulated “light and air” in a more
    straight forward, less “planned” way than its replacement code, allowed for the construction of a very urbane kind of “modern traditional” architecture (e.g., the greatly beloved Rockefeller Center, etc.) One of the specific reasons for the code being rewritten was to encourage
    the construction of the kind of modern buildings that many people (like you and I) see as anti-urban and anti-New York.

    The 1961 code is less oriented to protecting “light and air” than to determining the amount of space being built, meaning it’s more in line with the desire of planners to “plan” for development rather than just “neutrally” protect “light and air.” This shift in regulatory mechanism (from height and set back rules to floor area ratios) was also done, though, because it facilitated the construction of the kind of buildings that many people (like you and I) consider to be anti urban. Under the old code, such buildings could be built, but only at some sacrifice by a developer – making such buildings relatively uncommon (and more urbane). On top of this, the new code also provided bonuses that actually favored this kind of development (e.g., making them more profitable than more conventional structures).

    So this aspect of the anti-urbanism of modern architecture (at least in New York) is
    not really a market failure. (Don’t know how true this is of other places, e.g., London, though.) Admittedly, that doesn’t speak to things like glass curtain walls (and, particularly, mirrored glass curtain walls) which are anti-urban in the aggregate.

    Also, to play devil’s advocate, I have to admit that I’m kind of surprised at how popular much “ugly,” anti-urban modern architecture is among the general public. Ten years ago, or so, I thought only the “elites” valued this kind of architecture. But judging from the reactions to various such buildings in New York (both from personal conversations, newspaper coverage and internet coverage), this kind of architecture seems to be surprisingly popular among the general public too. So, if this is actually the case, than our current cityscape would not be a product of a market “failure” (i.e., if the majority of the general public actually preferred this kind of cityscape).

    However, as I’ve alluded to in my previous comments, I think the popularity of such architecture is “superficial” in the sense that people aren’t really thinking “deeply” about the cityscape, but only about how such buildings look in magazines, on the internet, or from a quick walk by (on a nice day). Three other points: 1) to some extent I think people are being “brainwashed” by architectural critics (and its the modernists who control the media); 2) I don’t think
    people are thinking about the ECONOMIC implications (all those empty plazas instead of storefronts, driving up the rents of existing storefronts and making non-chains less viable); I don’t think people are aware – since so much of the cityscape has changed – of what they’ve
    lost.

    Again, I’m in agreement with so much of what the other critics of modern architecture
    in thread have said, and I so happy to see others expressing similar concerns. But in order to convince others I think we have to address all the angles.

    Benjamin Hemric
    Sat. June 23, 2012, 10:45 p.m.

Meta