As you've likely heard by now: Barack Obama has nominated Shaun Donovan, present head of NYC HPD, as his Secretary of Housing & Urban Development. Now I know ShaunDon wasn't on my wishlist of potential HUD nominees [posted in the comments section of one of Nick Kristof's posts from last month), but it should be noted for the record that this Progressive Reactionary did politely suggest hiring an architect to head up HUD—a position unknown to most but that could loosely be defined as supervising the American built environment. And while ShaunDon is not really a practicing architect, he was indeed trained as one, so I suppose that's close enough. [As if my insane suggestion of Michael Sorkin ever had a chance...] The mere fact that he doesn't come from the development side of things, that he has in large part dedicated his career to public investment in housing and urban issues—this alone should ease our nerves, even just a little. Here's hoping that the new HUD chief will heed the call to bring more architects and planners into the fold with regard to housing construction and urban growth.
It's an exciting time, seeing all these cabinet appointments come to light. But my word, what a lot of work there is to be done.
Ada Louise Huxtable valiantly reenters the fray this week with a piece in the Wall Street Journal on the endless 2 Columbus Circle debates. It's fitting that the critical history of 2CC both begins and ends with Huxtable: she is the critic who initially catapulted the original Edward Durell Stone building into infamy in the 1960s with her branding of those "lollipop" columns, and with this article, it is she who has the final word on the building's latest incarnation.
It's also fair to say that this week's piece is nothing less than a critical tour de force, indicting not only the building and it's architects, but also the entire discourse surrounding 2CC. And while I don't entirely agree with her on all the counts (see my thoughts on the matter), you can't help but give credit where credit is due. Huxtable is as ever a critical force to be reckoned with. if there's one thing we probably do agree on, it's that the whole tortured history of this little building—for the moment complete—makes me nostalgic for a time when critics both had something to say and knew how to say it.
I am presently reading Tom McCarthy's Remainder
"Over the last century the stock market has outperformed cash in every decade apart from the thirties. Far outperformed. As a rule of thumb, you can expect your capital to double over five years. In the current market conditions, you can reduce that figure to three, perhaps even two."I should also mention that this book was published in 2005.
"How does it work?" I asked him. "I invest in companies and they let me share in their profits?"
"No," he said. "Well, yes, that's a small aspect of it. They give you a dividend. But what really propels your investment upwards is speculation."
"Speculation?" I repeated. "What's that?"
"Shares are constantly being bought and sold," he said. "The prices aren't fixed: they change depending on what people are prepared to pay for them. When people buy shares, they don't value them bu what they actually represent in terms of goods or services: they value them by what they might be worth, in an imaginary future."
"But what if that future comes an they're not worth what people thought they would be?" I asked.
"It never does," said Matthew Younger. "By the time one future's there, there's another one being imagined. The collective imagination of all the investors keeps projecting futures, keeping the shares buoyant. Of course, sometimes a particular set of shares stop catching people's imagination, so they fall. It's our job to get you out of a particular one before it falls—and, conversely, to get you into another when it's just about to shoot up."
"What if everyone stops imagining futures for all of them at the same time?" I asked him.
"Ah!" Younger's eyebrows dipped into a frown, and his voice became quieter, withdrawing from the room back to his small mouth and chest. "That throws the switch on the whole system, and the market crashes. That's what happened in '29. In theory it could happen again." He looked sombre for a moment; then his hearty look came back—and, with it, his booming voice as he resumed: "But if no one thinks it will, it won't."
"And do they think it will?"
"No."
"Cool," I said. "Let's buy some shares."
Another good one from New York magazine: Robert Sullivan on Fresh Kills Park and its designer, James Corner of Field Operations. Worth a read. Precisely the kind of mega-infrastructural project that we've been talking about as a means to stimulate the economy (and keep architects in business).
Over in New York magazine, Justin Davidson picks up where I left off with a call for a massive national program of infrastructural rehabilitation. Although perhaps a little too fixated on bridges (there are other kinds of infrastructure, too, you know), Davidson does touch on all the important arguments for such a much-needed stimulus: the economic advantages, the moral imperative, the symbolic/psychological effects. Again, I ask: isn't this a no-brainer? I have yet to hear or read a legitimate counter-argument why a massive infrastructural spending initiative is not a good idea right now.
An aside: Anyone else out there impressed with Davidson's writing over the past year or so? It's refreshing now and then to read a critic who actually has something to say...
Finally. John Lanchester, of whom I must admit I have never before heard, has a stunning piece buried in the back of Nov. 10 New Yorker on the credit crisis as it relates the broader cultural paradigms of modernism and postmodernism. Although I've appreciated the commentary of Krugman (who just today so succinctly declared: "This is an economic emergency"), Reich, and others these past few months, this is really the first piece of critical analysis that I've read that situates the credit crisis within a larger cultural and philosophical context.
Lanchester's article, which uses the format of a book review of recent books on the credit crunch as an excuse to analyze its cultural/theoretical dimension, is as revelatory as it is simple. Of course derivatives, credit-default swaps, and all those other bizarre financial instruments are nothing more than financial incarnations of the classic late twentieth-century disjunction between the signifier and the signified. And of course the root of the crisis lies in the escalation of this disjunction to the point where the signifier no longer retains any connection whatsoever to the original signified. Lanchester's piece echoes critic/philosopher/writer Mark C. Taylor (see his book Confidence Games from a few years back) in this idea of how money has essentially become nothing more than a floating signifier. All value is relative—or derivative, if you will. It's all a house of mirrors. Lanchester's key line:
It seems wholly contrary to common sense that the market for products that derive from real things should be unimaginably vaster than the market for things themselves.Now forgive me for my sudden, euphoric lapse into the language of post-structuralism and deconstruction; nobody should have to parse such nonsense. But in all seriousness, most people have no idea what the hell is going on with this credit crisis, and hopefully Lanchester's reading of the situation can help to encourage a broader understanding. It sure did for me.
Via Andrew... I just ran this site through the Typealyzer, which claims to analyze a website and categorize the author in terms of right-brain/left-brain dominance. This Progressive Reactionary landed smack-dab in the left-brain camp of the so-called "Mechanics":
Following up on an earlier post... there's an interesting rumor going around about President-Elect Obama's plans to establish a Whitehouse Office of Urban Policy. This is a good sign for the 70% of us Americans who dwell in urban areas! Dare I suggest that maybe an architect or planner should be appointed to head up such an office? Stay tuned for more....
I'll spare you, dear readers, my own gushing post-election thoughts. Instead, I point you to a fitting coda to the tremendous milestone of Tuesday's election and to my own ruminations from a while back on the possibility of an Obama presidency. From TomDispatch.com: a followup by Rebecca Solnit to her beautiful 2003 essay "Acts of Hope." Read it.
...and not a moment too soon. Let's go out there and win this thing, once and for all.
This Progressive Reactionary has been dispatched to the swing-state hinterland for one last effort to spread the gospel of hope and change, so you won't be hearing much until I return on November 5.
In the meantime: get off your ass, and go do something. History is on the verge of being made. Be a part of it.
-PR
Some readers wonder why this Progressive Reactionary—typically so obsessed with such architectural obscurities as locative cartography, John Portman, and Swiss bunkers—has switched gears in recent months to become so fixated on the presidential election. Well, besides the obvious fact that we have a real chance with an Obama presidency to pursue an alternate (and better) future for this country, I think there are several direct implications for our small microcosm of architectural discourse. I've been thinking lately how to contextualize the election within the realm of architecture, and to start, I can offer the following quick thoughts:
This morning's political television provided a fitting contrast of the choice this country faces in two weeks time. On Meet the Press, former general and Secretary of State Colin Powell eloquently and wholeheartedly endorsed Barack Obama. In a 7-minute delineation of what led to his decision (which, like the New Yorker's long endorsement from a few weeks back, goes down the list, issue-by-issue, demonstrating how Obama is overwhelmingly the better choice), Powell issued perhaps the most comprehensive and well-spoken endorsement of the candidate to date. And this is no minor development: Powell is a pillar of the Republican Party, and a figure of almost mythic esteem and appeal to independent voters. This will be seen, no doubt, as an attempt by Powell to atone for past misadventures in the Bush administration, most notably the charades that led up to our invasion of Iraq. And while such a redemption cannot happen overnight, this observer sees Powell's endorsement of Obama—undeniably a brave political move—as a step in the right direction. Listen to his words; they are powerful:
It's also worth noting that, as with other conservatives who have become disillusioned with McCain's candidacy, the ultimate dealbreaker for Powell—the last straw that pushed him over the edge—is McCain's selection of Sarah Palin as his running mate. Powell echoes what the majority of the country feels in his judgment that Sarah Palin is not qualified to be Vice President. The implication, and the reality, is that the selection of Palin, someone utterly unfit for office, thus renders McCain (who chose her) equally unfit. If things go our way, this fact will no doubt dominate the "why McCain lost" election post-mortems.
Meanwhile, over on Fox, after casually dismissing the Powell endorsement (Surely, McCain must realize its import? Maybe not), McCain was grilled by Chris Wallace on the flood of "robo-calls" that has been unleashed in the battleground states in the past week:
The stark contrast of McCain's delusion with Powell's nuance speaks for itself.
I agree with Josh Marshall's assessment that the McCain/Palin/Republican strategy from here on out will be a last-ditch, desperate attempt to tie Obama through innuendo to the (implicit) twin evils of blackness and Islamic terrorism. And while the media and Obama partisans may be tempted to brush such a strategy off as desperation, we dismiss it as such at our own risk. Not-so-distant history teaches us that such tactics, unfortunately, work; and as I've written before, the very chance that the agents of this intolerance could possibly emerge victorious in two weeks time make the stakes that much higher.
Disregard the polls. They are a meager attempt to quantify the unmeasurable, and I fear that this election will be shockingly close. So, I urge you, all of you who are on the side of decency and justice and virtue and common-sense and, yes, hope: with 16 days left in this epic election season, go out and do something to help make sure that in three weeks time, we won't be once again looking back, saying "What did we do wrong?" If nothing else — come November 5th, should Obama lose this election, I don't want to be able to say I didn't do anything about it. Make phone calls, and go to a battleground state. And if you can't do that, then contribute. Put your money where your mouth is; it's a worthy investment.
Geoff Manaugh, in true form, has a great post up today at BLDGBLOG. It's is his own kind of geographical take on the state of American politics, and it's not to miss. As good an argument against rancher presidents as I've ever read. Check it out: "Minor Landscapes and the Geography of American Political Campaigns."
Following up on an earlier post... I'm quite taken by Jon Mooallem's article ("This Old Recyclable House") in today's Times Magazine on the art of deconstructing old buildings. Actually, maybe it's less of an art and more of a science: the article, a profile of "deconstruction" pioneer Brad Guy and his Building Materials Reuse Association, describes how the proponents of deconstruction are trying to figure out how to extract the maximum value from a building in its last days. Of course, the process also provides the added ecological benefit of recycling the building into new construction materials, which immediately places it under the uber-umbrella of "sustainability"—that term that I am growing to loathe more and more for its increasingly empty meaning. But what I like about Guy's experiment is that it inserts itself into the urban politics and market of demolition, thereby instrumentalizing the motivations that lay behind the sustainable urge. In particular, the most promising aspect of this model is Guy's claim that his brand of demolition is actually a manufacturing process, by which it generates reclaimed materials to be used in the construction of new architecture.
CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS FOR MONU - magazine on urbanism #10 - HOLY URBANISM
The one thing that all religions on our planet have in common is their distinction between the holy and the profane. All religions appear to be organized as systems of beliefs with distinctive practices and all have built structures in relation to things holy. And those distinctive practices and structures have always shaped our cities in a profound way.The list, for example, of well-known holy practices - not even mentioning the city-shaping and structuring effects of holy constructions such as mosques, synagogues, temples, shrines, churches, or other holy facilities, that take place within cities, whether inside or outside holy constructions, whether performed individually or within groups - is endless. Just think of the terrifying urban intensity of the annual Christian celebrations during the Holy Week in Sevilla, or the tremendous density of Islamic prayers surrounding the Kaaba during the Hajj period in the world's largest mosque in the city of Mecca, which can accommodate up to 4 million worshippers as one of the largest gatherings of people in the world.
But apart from those obvious and well-documented relations between religions and cities, our urban life is probably even more deeply penetrated by all kinds of rather unknown and hidden religious moral codes, sacred values, faith traditions, holy communal organisations, supernatural spiritualities, devine beliefs, or superstitious institutions that pervade and shape our urban realm continuously. But what do those unfamiliar penetrations actually look like and what kind of effect do they have on cities? How do the effects differ between the different religions and how do they coexist in our cities? How are they manifested in built-up form?
The upcoming issue of MONU will unveil those effects and investigate the impact of holiness, faith, and religion on cities. How does religion influence urbanity and in what way does it shape our cities? Which religion's deep-rooted influences have we taken for granted already, so much so that we cannot even trace their roots anymore? What kind of extraordinary urban phenomena are created through religion and how could we define Holy Urbanism in general?
We invite uncompromising texts, untamed speculations, refined analysis, bold photography, and heroic projects on the topic "Holy Urbanism" for our next issue of MONU. Contributions or questions should be sent to info@monu-magazine.com by the end of November 2008. MONU #10 will be published in the winter 2009.
With all the talk of the impending opening of the Museum of Arts and Design at 2 Columbus Circle, I thought I would preempt Ourossoff's review (coming any day now, I presume) with a reference to my own take, written back in May.
I also wanted to mention the conversation with critics Justin Davidson and Jerry Saltz printed in New York Magazine. It's short but worth reading - I especially agree with Davidson's final comments on how the design just doesn't go far enough with any of the concepts at hand.
I still haven't been inside, so we'll leave that for another post.
From May: "The Ghost of Huntington Hartford"
From the Economist's Democracy in America blog: a fascinating exercise in political mapping and analysis by the Christian Science Monitor. Called "Patchwork Nation," the interactive map divides the country into eleven so-called "communities," ranging from "Evangelical Epicenters" to "Emptying Nests" to "Monied 'Burbs," and the interface allows you to explore what parts of the country fall into these predefined categories.
While the underlying concept—the idea that whole counties can be generalized based on demographic data—falls into the old Karl Rove / Mark Penn "divide and conquer" methodology*, the map is nonetheless eyeopening. It's kind of a wake-up call that makes you realize how utterly daunting the task of a national campaign must be.
The site also represents each candidate's campaign history as a graphic compilation of which kind of constituency he/she has visited over a certain period of time. It looks as if Obama's spectrum is (just) slightly more heterogeneous than McCain's, but it's hard to make any real conclusions from this.
* A word on these old politics of "divide and conquer." I've been thinking lately about how Rove and Penn have become inexorably linked (at least in the minds of most of the lefty blogosphere), and I think that while there are certain similiraties in their strategies, it's worth pointing out some differences.
The Rove strategy relies on dividing the country on a mega-scale into two halves, and utilizing primarily social/cultural issues to mobilize the conservative base and boost turnout just enough to reach a 50% +1 majority. This is what worked so well for Bush four years ago, when Rove's ingenious under-the-radar machinations to get gay marriage referendums on the ballot in so many states arguable provided Bush's 3 million vote margin.
The approach of Mark Penn (the Clintonian Rove, and almost equally as detestable as the original) is an atomized version of the Rovian strategy. Instead of dividing the country into two, Penn amplifies difference even further and looks for what he calls "micro-trends," thereby breaking down the population into ever-smaller groups such as Soccer Moms and Joe Sixpacks. Instead of exploiting existing cultural divisions, it's about creating even more difference and polarization, even in cases where there otherwise wouldn't be any. The task then becomes how a candidate can tailor their message to somehow win the support from as many different of these sub-populations as possible in order to, as in the Rove playbook, capture the 50% + 1. Some would call this pandering; needless to say, it didn't work this year for Mrs. Clinton.
The bottom line is that the similarities between the politics of Rove and Penn outweigh the differences, which are largely scalar in nature. Political success, of course, always entails building a coalition, which necessarily involves courting different interest groups and populations. It's refreshing, however, how the Obama campaign has managed to leave the Rove/Penn politics behind: Instead of appealing to that which makes us different from each other, Obama's promise lies in his appeal to what we have in common. A little touchy-feely? Certainly. But powerful nonetheless.
Labor Day has come and gone, and we find ourselves with just over seven weeks until November 4, when this country will go to the polls and decide whether or not it wants to put an end to what an unknown state senator from Illinois once referred to as "our long political darkness."
You may have noticed that with a few exceptions, there has not been much talk in these pages of the endless build-up to this year's election. This is not to say that there is a lack of interest, commitment, or passion on the part of yours truly with regard to the election's outcome. Quite on the contrary: I've been biding my time, conscious of the fact that oversaturation breeds numbness, which in turn breeds apathy. I am also acutely aware that the last thing the world needs—particularly the micro-world of this blog's readership—is another ranting, raving, lefty lunatic touting the twin mantras of hope and change.
So, with this mind, I am shifting gears. Be forewarned that in the coming weeks you may notice a marked change in the content of these pages. What follows is a kind of summary of my own thoughts and emotions over the past year or so. My comments may seem a bit too over-the-top in their passion and urgency (even for this Progressive Reactionary), but the stakes are just too high this time.
...History is shaped by the groundswells and common dreams that single acts and moments only represent. It's a landscape more complicated than commensurate cause and effect. Politics is a surface in which transformation comes about as much because of pervasive changes in the depths of the collective imagination as because of visible acts, though both are necessary. And though huge causes sometimes have little effect, tiny ones occasionally have huge consequences.
From the New York Times today, a good effort by Nicolai Ourossoff to once again draw attention to the plight of post-Katrina New Orleans.
Using the opulent backdrop of the Beijing Olympics to contrast the shameful lack of progress in New Orleans over the past three years, Ourossoff smartly links the New Orleans inaction to a larger national neglect of large-scale infrastructural projects. It's becoming apparent that this aversion to build (or rebuild) on a grand scale is one of the lasting victories of the anti-government conservative revolution that began in the late 60's and came to horrifying fruition with the W. presidency. Ourossoff is right to lament the fact that the best and the brightest of the architectural profession are fleeing to distant shores, to countries that are "not afraid to invest in the future of [their] cities." And while such architects are often criticized for their fleeting loyalties and willingness to overlook certain political realities in the process of getting a commission, even this Progressive Reactionary must admit that it is unrealistic to expect them to stick around and work for free for a grossly underfunded reconstruction effort for which there is no political support from the state or federal levels. Indeed, the $400 million of public funding for New Orleans reconstuction mentioned by Ourossoff pales in comparison to the roughly $12 billion currently being spent each month for the Iraq/Afghanistan wars.
What really shocks me is that, especially our moment of economic turbulence, there hasn't been a more widespread acceptance that infrastructural projects (like rebuilding New Orleans) are a decent way to create jobs, stimulate the economy, and maybe do some good for society while you're at it. People like Robert Reich have been quite vocal on this, and Obama has a "National Infrastructure Reinvestment Bank" as a central component of his economic recovery plan which would disburse $60 billion over ten years. Call me crazy, but doesn't this seem kind of a no-brainer? Or, at the very least, a worthy alternative to the current misguided approach?
But back to Nicolai, and his crusade for New Orleans. It's worth noting that over the past few years since Nicolai took over the helm of architecture criticism at the Times, New Orleans has become kind of a pet issue for Ourossoff. In fact, one could say that a good deal of his writing, beyond the frequent, frivolous paeans to starchitects and their condo buildings, has been in defense of large-scale, classically Modernist initiatives, particularly of the infrastructural and mega-public kind. This is commendable journalism, and it is good to see the Times partaking in such an enterprise every now and then.
It is also worth noting that Ourossoff includes an equally commendable shout-out to local efforts in New Orleans to preserve several modernist landmarks from the 1950s and 60s. He should have extended the shout-out, however, to bloggers like Life Without Buildings (whose post from a few weeks back has helped lead the charge in saving these buildings) and Regional Modernism, but I suppose that would be asking for too much.
Via Andrew Sullivan, some incredible photos of the protesters and their law enforcement counterparts at both the Democratic and Republican National Conventions.
Eye-opening.
This has been out there on the internets for a while now, but it's still quite compelling. Apparently a demolition company in Japan is pioneering a way to demolish a building from the bottom up. Check out the video:
The process (called "daruma-otoshi") is like construction in reverse, literally. Much cleaner, safer, more efficient. Pretty cool.
A thought: what if Pruitt Igoe had been demolished in this manner? It certainly would have made for a much less dramatic event, and perhaps Charles Jencks would not have been prompted to proclaim the death of architectural modernism. Imagine an alternate future: a gentle demolition of a modern icon prevents postmodernism from ever happening. The horror!
Unrelated: Still reeling from Sarah Palin's acceptance speech tonight (and the other assorted exercises in poor taste proffered by tonight's roster at the Republican National Convention), I sincerely hope that this will be the moment to which, 9 short weeks from now, we will all look at back and say, "That was the beginning of the end." Here's to hope.
Paul Goldberger returns—in true, clueless form—to the pages of the New Yorker this week with a real doozy of a review of Allied Works' redo of 2 Columbus Circle. As you've no doubt heard me lament before, dear reader, it is unconscionable how a publication of such supposed critical esteem can contract someone as critically impotent as Paul Goldberger to be their in-house architectural authority. It's a travesty.
With regard to the new building, I haven't been inside yet, but I still stand by my earlier thoughts.
Link: "Hello, Columbus" by Paul Goldberger, in the New Yorker
I'm currently reading Luc Sante's Low Life
[Nostalgia] can be generally defined as a state of inarticulate contempt for the present and fear of the future, in concert with a yearning for order, constancy, safety, and community—qualities that were last enjoyed in childhood and are retroactively imagined as gracing the whole of the time before one's birth. [Low Life, xi]New Urbanism, anyone?
Despite evidence to the contrary (the embarrassing dearth of activity at this spot over the past several months), I've been enjoying busier-than-normal summer with the Day Job, among other distractions. I did manage to escape momentarily to attend last night's opening of the Home Delivery show at MoMA. The show is certainly worth checking out for those in New York at all this summer - it revisits the troubled history and perhaps-promising-yet-likely-also-troubled future of prefabrication in architecture. The most exciting elements are of course the pieces commissioned by the Museum specifically for this exhibition: five full-size buildings constructed in an adjacent parking lot and three speculative wall prototypes installed in the interior gallery. Should be interesting to see how the public, press, and pundits receive it all. As for this Progressive Reactionary, once I have a free moment I hope to post some more cohesive thoughts on the show. Until then...
[image credit : progressive reactionary]
[image credit : progressive reactionary]
[21st Century White Brick. Image credit : progressive reactionary]
[image credit : progressive reactionary]
[Historic Preservation, by Allied Works. Image credit : progressive reactionary]From Metropolis: Stephen Zacks offers a critique of the recent bid contest for the development rights to the West Side rail yards in Manhattan. Without going into too much detail: in the wake of several failed attempts to develop this mega-site with public funding (Olympic stadium, Jets stadium, Javits Center expansion, etc. etc.), the MTA, owner of the site, solicited bids from developer-bank teams for the air rights to the railroad yards. Teams included, among others, architects Steven Holl, a KPF-Stern partnership, and a super-st.architecture lineup of Di-Sco-Fro/SANAA/SOM/Field Operations/Thomas Phifer/SHoP/Gary Handel. In the end, a Helmut Jahn / Peter Walker scheme for developers Tishman Speyer / Morgan Stanley took the cake. Needless to say, the winner's a real doozy.
[image: Tishman Speyer's scheme for Hudson Yards, from Metropolis]Came across this speech that critic Jim Kunstler gave back in 2004:
In true form, he's a bit all over the place, but I must confess a certain affinity for Kunstler's ranting and raving. At times. There's something interesting about his simultaneous progressive posturing (sustainable living in the face of "peak oil") and his reactionary leanings (an apparent partiality for New Urbanist planning strategies). Plus, he's deniably an entertaining and captivating speaker. I could do with a little less of the apocalyptic doomsday scenarios, though. I think a small dose of utopian optimism is in order—this might add a bit more bite to his bark, if you know what I mean.
Looks like it goes to Nouvel this year. Yawn.
Update: Looks like the Times was, as they say, in on the fix... they've already linked to a profile on Nouvel by Arthur Lubow, which will appear in next week's Magazine. Double yawn.
Just got word that MoMA has launched their website for this summer's exhibition on prefabrication titled Home Delivery: Fabricating the Modern Dwelling. Looks like it will be an online journal recording the progress of the five mega-prototypes that will be constructed in the empty lot next to the museum in time for the exhibition opening. As reported by RoPog in the Times back in January, MoMA has commissioned these projects to accompany the exhibition upstairs as a way to showcase contemporary approaches to prefab. It's Barry Bergdoll's debut as his new position as chief curator of architecture & design... so expectations are high.
List of the outdoor prototypes:
If there's any silver lining to the credit crunch and the ensuing tumult in the markets, I suppose this would qualify.
According to today's Times, the slowing economy threatens to stall the infamous Atlantic Yards project in Brooklyn. As far as I'm concerned, as upsetting as this must be for the Ratner-Gehry contingent behind the mega-project, this is fantastic news. As an architect partial to the Mega as a means of enacting major urban and, potentially, social changes (that ever-elusive Progress), I must admit some measure of excitement about such the opportunities afforded by such a large project. And as a realist, I can't deny that something must, will -- and should! -- happen on this site, at this bustling yet oddly vacant junction of Flatbush and Atlantic Avenues. The real-estate is just too valuable to let it sit unused, and the City and the Borough desperately need the housing (if not the sports arena...). But as a resident of a neighborhood directly adjacent to the Atlantic Yards site, I can't help but rejoice at this particular side-effect of the market's downward spiral. Yes, something will happen at Atlantic Yards. But it doesn't have to be that. If nothing else, it looks as if the credit crunch has bought us all a little more time.
link: "Slow Economy Likely to Stall Atlantic Yards" by Charles V. Bagli, in the New York Times
Update: Nicolai voices his thoughts on the matter. It's difficult to understand exactly what point he is trying to get across.
[Svalbard Global Seed Vault. Image credit: NY Times/AP -John McConnico]
I've said it before, and I'll say it again: Democracy is not a spectator sport. Please vote tomorrow.
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