New York City 2016

MAY

I've always had a closet fascination with urban planning. How cities grow, sprawl and the micro-decisions made along the evolutionary path that either puts a city on a track toward urban bliss, or plunges it into a residential albatross. Not surprisingly, New York City faces considerable challenges as an expected influx of 1 million new residents make the Big Apple their new home over the next decade or two. At first blush, you may not think going from 8 million to 9 million would be such a big leap, but in a city with nowhere to sprawl to, it could be a logistical nightmare if not planned for correctly and creatively.

We can't just bulldoze and slap up some towers - we've learned some lessons from the sixties - and it isn't just half a million new homes that we need. Those million need offices, factories, labs to work in. They need subways, buses (and ferries and trams) to commute in. They need places to park and places to play, plus the power to light their homes. All in a city that can't sprawl.

After 10 years of living in Vancouver, I have been exposed to urban planning done right. Cities from coast to coast in North America have taken cues from the urban planning successes of Vancouver, especially as it pertains to how the city has managed to make downtown-living such a green friendly, sought-after residential lifestyle. How will New York City handle continued population growth while improving, or at least not sacrificing the current livability of the city?

Sprinkled like jewelry across this new city fabric are projects, some fabulous, some already outdated, by both the dinosaurs and fledglings of the architectural pantheon. Yes, we're getting our Gehry (one, two, three, four, maybe more), but also our Morphosis, our ShoP, our TEN Arquitectos.

But often in some peculiar locations. Piano across from the Port Authority? Gehry in Brooklyn? Vinoly by the Williamsburg Bridge? The New York of 2016 doesn't husband all the new design ideas in Manhattan but spreads them out. (One can't help but get a little giddy with all the big names, but there is a dark side to hiring all these out-of-towners. Too often they serve as ambassadors to the upper-middle class for owners with an agenda, cloaking the same old towers in a park.

New York City is by no means unique in the challenges it faces but it clearly will boast a potpourri of architecture talent to help craft and stitch together a vision of the future. How will the confluence of ideas come together and play out in the lives of resident New Yorkers? Time will tell. One thing we do know for certain, is that New York's successes and failures will be placed on the world stage for all global residents to praise and criticize.

Building the (New) New York [New York Magazine]

TAGS: new york urban planning