Pandemics [...] are anti-urban. They exploit our impulse to congregate. And our response so far — social distancing — not only runs up against our fundamental desires to interact, but also against the way we have built our cities and plazas, subways and skyscrapers. They are all designed to be occupied and animated collectively. For many urban systems to work properly, density is the goal, not the enemy. — The New York Times
Michael Kimmelman, architecture critic for The New York Times, waxes wistfully over the inherent collectivity of urban life as the COVID-19 pandemic shuts down cities around the globe.
Describing the current state of affairs, Kimmelman writes, “Today’s threat is altogether another sort of challenge to solidarity and our way of life. It is not a heat wave or a blitz. It can’t be mitigated by going to concerts or museums. It requires isolation. We will need to figure out a different approach, together.”
18 Comments
These urbanist critics only have one, predictable move. Worship at the alter of density, public space, profit. Time for a new era of hard-edged urbanism, one that reflects the reality that cramming as many people in as small of a space as you can is over. Hopefully we get smarter urban solutions like high speed rail that can transport people more easily to the suburbs and smaller cities.
The hype of cities as "creative centers" seems to be overhyped. They are centers of power but not necessarily creativity.
Wow, what unsupported crap.
I agree with Chemex here. Village density, rapid mass transit, and mixed urbanism is the way to go.
Cities aren't "hyped as creative centers", they ARE creative centers because creative people naturally congregate there. Our profession is one of the only ones still pretending the lone creative is anything but a myth. For every lone creative out there there's an office of people making the "lone creative's" ideas fucking work. Move that shit to the suburbs and watch it struggle.
I also agree with that but think these two ideas can easily coexist.
Nobody is talking about isolation. Cities do provide a lot of energy and inspiration and collaboration, but that idea has been somewhat abused by urbanists as a fetish. It's the opposite extreme of isolation.
The reality is cities aren't designed to be lived-in now, but are now mostly for either rich people who made their bones in Texas or Russian oil, immigrants doing all the hard labor, and 20-somethings who will tolerate tight living spaces before they move to the burbs and start families. Either way, a lot of creativity happens outside of the city--most people "create" outside in the burbs or country then take it to the city, make money, then leave. That's why it would be nice to have a more seamless connection between big and small towns via high speed rail, as opposed to the complete disconnection of todays American city/country dynamic.
"mostly for either rich people who made their bones in Texas or Russian oil, immigrants doing all the hard labor, and 20-somethings who will tolerate tight living spaces"
If only there were a source of data to prove or disprove your assumptions...
There's no such thing as a reliable source of urban data ... most so-called data is less reliable than educated assumptions
That statement of ignorance explains your commentary, thanks.
You know exactly what these elite urbanists are going to say before they write it. When things get back to normal, they will be writing columns about the triumph of urbanism in fighting the virus. Back to the same old generic spreadsheet and top-down market narratives. But to fight climate change we will need a return to architecture values of economy, structure, composition, use.
Chemex, in this case I agree with you. One needs to look beyond our cities and look at cities in Asia too, which arguably were the case of this virus originating from the ghastly wet market in Wuhan.
As one of the few regular posters here whose spent a considerable amount of time in China, the emergence of this pandemic is way more about failures of authoritarianism than it is about failures of urbanism. It's Mao's Great Famine all over again.
Do you think that China cities are both more connected as a country but disconnected and isolated as urban design (modernist towers in the park from what ive seen). Wheras America seems to be more disconnected from city to city but more dense and open to problems on a city scale.
Xenophobia and personal biases aren't a good basis for "needs".
How about you go live in Wuhan then? The truth may sound xenophobic, but it is the truth.
Your truth is not the truth. You might think it is, but you're wrong. And racist. But that's par for the course.
Wuhan is great most of the time.
https://www.vox.com/videos/2020/3/6/21168006/coronavirus-covid19-china-pandemic
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y7nZ4mw4mXw
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