www.archpaper.com/articles
Hello Everyone:
Today we're going to look at the subject of master planning cities. I'm starting with a terrific article by John Gendall, "Emergent Master Planning," in
Architects Newspaper. Specifically, master planning in the post-2008 economic collapse. Master planning in the pre-economic collapse was a product of the Clinton/Bush real estate boon and was associated with the evil triumvirate of bankers, big government, and risky developers. In the post-meltdown period, urban theorists had a go at the grass roots, self start up stories that sprang to life in the wake of global economic collapse. However, in the wake of all this, the American city is at a critical juncture that mandates reckoning with changing economic drivers-the public health realities of environmental abuse and the changing cultural relevance of the suburbs. While do-it-yourself startups and micro-gardens are nice, Mr. Gendall asks "where has the master plan gone?" Good question, let's discuss shall we.
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Downtown Chicago
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It only seems fitting to start in the home of modern American Architecture and Urbanism, Chicago. We'll get to New York later. "The City of Broad Shoulder" expects to undertake a $4 billion dollar reconfiguration of an entire section of the South Side. In 1901, when U.S. Steel dropped anchor on a 600-acre landfill on Lake Michigan, a site specifically chosen for its close proximity to a water source for waste management and incoming supplies. Although the site drove a wedge between the South Side and the waterfront, the thousands of jobs the mill generated justified the location. However, the environmental damage cause by the operation blighted the neighborhood. Less than ten years ago, Lakeside Development hired the architectural firms of Skidmore, Owing, and Merril and Sasaki to develop a master plan for the site.
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Aerial View of the South Side of Chicago
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According to Douglas Voigt, the director of urban design at SOM, "One of our first priorities is to deliver infrastructure to the site." Good start. Specifically, Mr. Voigt wants the infrastructure technology of the future, not forty or fifty year old technology. What the designers imagine is a micro-grid, similar to university campuses, where wind and/or solar technology can be generated by the district and sold to the city when there is surplus. The plan also overhauls the site's relationship to the water. By taking advantage of the landfill's porous slag, the designers intend to create a way for rainwater to filter through remediated terrain, returning to the lake recharging its water table. It's not about undoing the environmental damage of the past, rather, it's about making development an environmental possibility. Oh? Again Mr. Voigt, "We want to create a positive contribution to the site's ecology." The SOM team does not intend to make the site a testing ground for environmental technologies. They plan to foreground the human experience of a potential new district. There are parks and open space, a recreational marina, smaller blocks in the works in order to enhance the quality of life for the residents. Notice how he didn't mention anything about schools, grocery stores, clinics, or affordable housing?
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Aerial View of Downtown Los Angeles
urbanone.com |
Mention large-scale master planning and the word transportation is one of the words that immediately pops into the head. Think of a city with non-existent mass-transit (alright semi-existent) and the city of Los Angeles comes to mind. After all this is the city mythologized the car. Now, city transportation planners are engaged in expanding its subway system, witnessing surges in regional rail line ridership, all in anticipation of a high-speed rail. At the heart of this is Union Station, that 1939 architectural gem dedicated to train travel. It's truly a dynamic space with vast expanses
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Union Station, Los Angeles, Ca
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of corridors circulating through lovingly cared for architecture. A must see even if you're taking a train. In 2011, the Metropolitan Transit Authority bought the property and hired Gruen and Associates and Grimshaw Architects to make the National Historic Landmark into an urban workhorse. Cal Hollis, Metro's executive of countywide planning states, "Our first goal is to address the transit needs..." Perhaps rail lines dedicated to going from Downtown to the Airport? Union Station was original built as a transit building but has grown into a multi-modal transportation hub. Union Station sits on the outskirts of Downtown Los Angeles, apart from core, much like Dodger Stadium. The design teams hope to integrate the train station with the downtown. The master plan would include two office buildings and about 250 residential units as way to connect the station with downtown.
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Denver, Colorado
acg.org |
If Los Angeles needs a helpful model for a multi-modal transportation network, which it does, it can look no further than Denver, Colorado. Next spring, the "Mile High City" will cut the ribbon on its own historic Union Station as the center of a multi-modal transit network. Bill Mosher, senior managing director of development for Trammell Crow and the owner's representative for Union Station explained, "We had several elements feeding into downtown...The issue was where to put the hub." It was decided that the hub
would be Union Station, Denver. The joint
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Union Station, Denver, Colorado
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design/build venture between SOM, Hargreaves Associates, and Kiewit is now reconfiguring into a centerpiece for a made over city and regional transportation scheme as well as a connector space between downtown and the Central Platte Valley. This project highlights an Obama era touchstone: government spending. Bill Mosher explains again, "There is to be an understanding of the role of government." Pointing to a 2004 voter-approved financing for a transportation initiative, Mr. Mosher continues, "there has to be public investment investment, which is then followed by the private sector." Private money follows public investment, that works.
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Downtown Silver Spring, Maryland
en.wikipedia.org |
Silver Spring, Maryland is an unincorporated part of Montgomery County, Maryland and a census-designated place that lies at the northern apex of Washington D.C. Currently on the books is a master plan for the The Blairs. The Blairs were built in the sixties as suburban foil to our nation's capital. The twenty-seven acre community features 1,300 residential units in slab buildings circled by parking lots. Must make for a lovely view (lol). The development's original owners, The Tower Companies hired Bing Thom Architects and Saseki to create a plan for a denser development by relocating most of the 3,200 spaces underground. According to Ling Meng of Bing Thom Architects,
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The Blairs
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"The key was to create a series of public spaces that not only allow for recreation. but complement the commercial space around it." Sasaki principal Alan Ward states, "The challenge in developing this many units would that it could have resulted in a mega-tower, but by keeping the geometries varied and developing residential block wrapped by townhouses, the entire community will have a very human scale."
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New York City
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O.K. As promised, it's time to talk about master planning and New York City. If the transit project in Denver project highlights integrating a multi-modal hub into a the city and the role of public investment coupled with private money, then New Yorkers will have no trouble recognizing this formula in the much awaited Hudson Yards redevelopment, whose beginnings are found in the extension of the Number 7 subway. The $2 billion transportation investment master plan conceived by KPF will harness 13-million square feet of mixed-use development-commercial and residential-onto a 26-acre site. In previous efforts, urban development on this scale
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Hudson Yards, New York City
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have been given a bad reputation for heavy-handed top-down approaches, KPF is quite determined to avoid the mistakes of the past. "The key is to create an exciting urban experience," says KPF founding partner Bill Pedersen. Much of the master plan's emphasis is at the street level. "We considered the position of the human body and its relationship to the environment so that it's always changing as walk around," say Mr. Pedersen. As his example, Mr. Pedersen points to the way the proposed towers scale down to meet the Culture Shed, designed by Diller, Scofidio+ Renfro.
What can we take away from all these mega-master plans? These rather ambitious plans point to the changing cultural and demographic reality, we're becoming an urbanized society. The recent U.S. Census data indicates that that urban populations are growing faster than non-urban populations. The lack of outward expansion means that up is only way to go. Further, the ongoing debate between the do-it-yourself and master planned urbanism still echoes the debate between Robert Moses and Jane Jacobs. In its most reductive terms, Robert Moses is an urban disgrace and Jane Jacobs has a wonderful history of urban activism, highlighted by her efforts to save Greenwich Village. While all of these grand schemes involve decades of often contentious public debate, tortured political processes, and very expansive budgets, they all borrow from these urban arch-enemies. Master planning and community activism. To adhere to one or the other is counterproductive. The dense urban areas make the environmental and economic cased on their own. However, there is also a case to be made for another urban regeneration: the cultural reconsideration of the suburbs as the ultimate be all and end all. They are a product of an annual $100-billion-per-year subsidy. Ask yourself, can really afford to continue to sustain this or is there another way?
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