tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20743459.post8359454051454212959..comments2024-03-28T05:19:17.215-04:00Comments on Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park Report: Warnings about "the architect as artist" and Gehry's victimization of BrooklynNorman Oderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07618087999719667586noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20743459.post-89724444227959086632008-08-11T20:44:00.000-04:002008-08-11T20:44:00.000-04:00Not only are superblocks toxic to urban health and...Not only are superblocks toxic to urban health and, as Taylor says, discredited, once they are created they constitute an ongoing harm that there is very little opportunity to reverse. It is almost a point of no return.<BR/><BR/>There are only two instances I can think of where there was an opportunity, with redevelopment, to undo superblocking, and only one of them is significantly comparable to Atlantic Yards. The instance where there is some comparability is the redevelopment of the World Trade Center site. Interestingly, when the opportunity presented itself, the decision was do what was necessary to reverse the superblocking that had been part of the original World Trade Center site plan, groundbreaking for which had been in 1966. That included negotiations with Silverstien to reclaim land from where the new 7 World Trade Center would have been built so that Greenwich Street could be restored. (Jonathan Cohn in the “It’s the Scale, Stupid” piece cited- a superb piece- notes that Atlantic Yards “(now 8.66 million sf) would be like locating the former World Trade Center towers (only 7.6 million sf combined) plus Madison Square Garden, somewhere near the W.4th Street Transit Hub because of all the trains there.”)<BR/><BR/>(Jane Jacobs Jacobs may have discredited superblocking “nearly fifty years ago” as Taylor says but that was not quite long enough ago to stop the 1966 ribbon cutting for the Trade Center.)<BR/><BR/>For more about the recent and past design decisions with respect to the World Trade Center including details on the planed street reopenings see “Two, and Fro” which was just recently posted on Noticing New York at http://noticingnewyork.blogspot.com/2008/08/two-and-fro.html The same Noticing New York piece also deals with similar themes. It also deals with the issue of how we, the public, are at the mercy of “starchitects” when they come out to play and zeros in on Gehry and Ratner in connection with other recent design as examples of the problems of dangerous obviousness.<BR/><BR/>Michael D. D. White<BR/>Noticing New York<BR/>http://noticingnewyork.blogspot.com/MDDWhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16693635186364315879noreply@blogger.com