A Fresh Urban Model by Jean-Louis Cohen

NEW YORK 99 A fresh urban model by Jean-Louis Cohen In the late 20th century, New York could, in more than one regard, The Liberty Tower that was planned to stand atop the ascending be considered a metropolis of the past, in which innovation had spiral was gradually reduced to a glass obelisk, a poor substitute dried up, and where commercial architecture reigned supreme. for the prisms of Minoru Yamasaki, and the ingenious façades Invention, which had been one of the city’s industries, whether and structures of the original Twin Towers. Meanwhile, Santiago of a technological variety – Fulton’s steamboats, Otis elevators, Calatrava’s transport centre ends up being of marginal importance Edison’s electric lighting – or in the sphere of urbanism – the 1811 compared to the main logistical platforms located downtown. grid plan, Central Park and the 1916 zoning regulation – seemed to have become a forgotten skill. The hegemony of commercial If we want to find real novelty in New York in the first decade of the companies, the mediocrity of public commissions, and the absence 21st century we should look elsewhere. No one expected Democrat of any vision for urban planning combined to give New York an defector, Michael Bloomberg, to jump-start the biggest urban image of conservatism, cynicism and boredom, while excitement transformation project since John Lindsay was mayor (1966-1973). seemed to be centred on younger cities, apparently less hidebound With his close-knit team, he encouraged the process of gentrification by regulations, like Los Angeles, Houston and even Atlanta. Twenty that had started in the 1970s, and took advantage of the drop in years after his magisterial Delirious New York, Rem Koolhaas was crime levels resulting from the policies of his hard-line predecessor, to focus for a time on the Georgian metropolis, happy to see the Rudolph Giuliani. Even though regional planning, its glory days of deployment of a form of zoning-free urbanism and telling everyone the 1920s now no more than a nostalgic glow, was restricted to the who would listen that New York was finished. transport sector, the PlaNYC 2030 programme, designed to promote energy savings on a grand scale is, despite the absence of a unifying In this context, the catastrophe of September 11, 2001 was a kind design, an interesting combination of sector-based strategies of coup de grâce. New York punished for its sins. Skyscrapers had involving discrete projects. been sprouting like trees in a forest since the late 19th century, becoming a synecdoche of the “standing city”, to use the memorable The reconquest of the industrial shoreline of Brooklyn and the phrase originated by Céline and appropriated by Le Corbusier, who derelict harbour areas of the Hudson reconciled New York with its omitted to reveal his source. The structures were the target of an water courses and the bay and restored the geography that made attack aimed not only at New York but at the whole of America. it the world’s biggest port. Like Central Park, the transformation Thus came to pass the fantasy of destruction from the air first of the Fresh Kills landfill in Staten Island is a long-term project, expressed by H.G. Wells in The War of the Worlds before featuring reminiscent of the rejuvenating work of Frederick Law Olmsted. in a gripping photomontage by Alexandre Rodtchenko in 1930. At the same time, the residential fabric, from Manhattan to the Christened “Narcissus City” by Hubert Damisch due to its habit edges of the outer boroughs, is being transformed by a multiple of endlessly contemplating itself, particularly its skyline, New York zoning approach adapted to various sectors – more than a hundred was hit not only physically but also morally by Al-Quaida’s attacks. in total – which increases density near transport hubs, while the The previously dominant feeling of self-satisfaction was replaced transfer of building permits makes it possible to compensate by for a time by a raging persecution complex. making projects awarded to quality designers taller. By means of these incentives and negotiations, New York now clearly This temporary depression could have provoked a radical shift produces less in the way of architectural icons – in spite of the and made it possible, once everyone had got over the shock, unprecedented involvement of professionals from all over the to use the site of the World Trade Center as the platform for world, from Renzo Piano to Jean Nouvel and from Fumihiko Maki a conceptual renewal of vertical architecture. In spite of the to West 8 – and more in the way of original approaches to urban intense fermentation of ideas which followed the destruction of transformation. Doubtless, these approaches, indissociably linked the Twin Towers, and which concentrated the minds of architects, to the dynamism of the real estate market, are not entirely urbanists, sociologists and members of associations for over applicable to depressed urban areas, but they nevertheless mark two years, the reconstruction of what quickly came to be known the fact that a regime in which New York was a physical model has as “Ground Zero” has turned out to be no more than a series of been replaced by one in which the model is more methodological, disappointments. The project concocted by Daniel Libeskind, which as if, a metaphor of the post-industrial era, the city no longer won out over design elaborated by a team led by Rafael Viñoly, was exported urban hardware but urban software. • emasculated in the planning stages, but it is true that it included a number of elements that were more graphic than architectural, and thus easy to eliminate in the name of “realism”. .

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