Our Cities, Ourselves

When I travel around the country I am struck by the fact that most of our cities have turned into donuts. This is not an original thought. Many urban planners have noted the way downtowns are dying as cities are increasingly ringed by malls and big box stores where, more and more, everyone shops. Fortunately this fate has not befallen New York. Our downtowns and shopping thoroughfares remain vibrant and engaging in innumerable neighborhoods throughout the city. So how do we make sure they stay that way?

The excitement of New York reflects a mix of old and new. We have wonderful old neighborhoods filled with late19th century brownstones, we have iconic mid-century masterpieces like Philip Johnson and Mies van der Rohe’s Seagram Building, and we have new luxury residential towers from Costas Kandylis, Jean Nouvel, Richard Meier, and Frank Gehry, not to mention the ubiquitous Robert A. M. Stern. This dynamic between old and new energizes our skyline and creates the complex poem of our urban life.

Preservationists and developers are often seen as antithetical groups. Actually every city needs both. On the one hand we ARE our history. No urban area can be at peace with itself unless its history is cherished. The designation by the Landmarks Commission of such iconic areas as the Central Park West skyline and the homes on Hamilton Heights and in Ditmas Park remind us of our city’s cultural heritage as well as the sweeping changes in how we live over the past 150 years. By the same token, cities either change or they die. Without new buildings, especially those by significant architects, a neighborhood can become a mausoleum, a tribute only to its past and not an open door to its future.

So we as citizens need to support the need for appropriate landmarking while at the same time recognizing that age alone does not create value. Not every item in a junk store is an “antique”, and not every building built in the 1890s or 1920s should be preserved. Cities, like businesses, or people, have to change or get left behind. We need buildings and businesses, old and new, which create a vibrant street life and keep pedestrians interacting with their environment and each other. We need innovative ideas like the High Line and the wonderful Hudson River greenway stretching up Manhattan’s West Side. We need support for business, small and large, since these businesses are the engines driving New York into the future.

And most of all we need to remember that the ecosystem of cities is fragile. They can die from the center out as so many have across the United States. My job, and that of every urban citizen, is to make sure that doesn’t happen. I shop and dine locally, often in small owner operated stores and restaurants; as a small business owner myself, I strongly believe in the job and buzz creating power of small businesses. I support preserving  the historic legacy of New York while at the same time making way for transformational change. There is no either/or choice between the past and the future. To keep the hole in the donut full we need both!