I spent about 6 days in New York City in late January, Manhattan and Brooklyn. Up and down the island, $2.90 a pop on the subway – which more or less seemed functional – little trash around, but definitely dirty (certainly not handicapped accessible). The streets were pretty clean, and there were lots of e-bikes delivering goods. The e-bike has become entrenched in the city, though there is still plenty of traffic, cars and double/triple parked delivery trucks, buses.
It is hard to perceive the office vacancy rate as a visitor. There seemed to still be a lot of eateries open and there is certainly construction. Towers are being built, each trying to out do the other in their architectural prowess, twisting, cantilevering, leaning, and defying gravity in as many ways as the architect could imagine materials being able to accommodate. Glass, glass, glass, offering only tiny openable apertures. The low energy future? Seems not. Habitability? Not the first priority. Beauty, in the eye of the beholder, certainly, the beholder being the architect and the financiers, not so much the pedestrian subjected to looming buildings obstructing sun and views. In Chelsea, the unleashing of gigantism and opulence is glaring. The Whitney, the multiple ‘luxury’ towers, the renovated spaces with Tesla, Versace, and the other brands that have now become ubiquitous from airports to gentrified neighborhoods, Beirut to Manhattan via Dubai. Truly weird. Expensive, the same everywhere, and now banal.
I visited the newish little island park on the Hudson River (Pier 54) funded through Barry Diller and the Diller-Von-Furstenberg Family Foundation (Los Angeles does not have this kind of philanthropic wealth, for good or for bad). It is composed of 132 concrete tulips with trees, bulbs, a lovely amphitheater that faces out to the river. Lots of concrete, that is for sure, and next to the redeveloped Pier 57, with food, art, music and hands on environmental education. . . This is the new city I guess, arts, open space and luxury apartment buildings. The scale is dwarfing. The street smothered by buildings, caverns of noise, traffic, air pollution, and slivers of sunlight at the right time of day. What is ominous, beyond the concentration of wealth and power and its muscular ostentation, is the way this path renders a shift increasingly different. Building fancy end uses on the former piers makes it harder to (re)turn to river traffic that could be low energy, bringing goods from the surrounding areas, like food grown up and down the Hudson river. Yet, the Schooner Apollonia is a living example that shipping could be revived. Its watershed includes the Hudson River, New York Harbor, the East River, Newtown Creek, the Gowanus Canal, Raritan Bay, the Arthur Kill, the Kill Van Kull, and Rondout Creek. Apollonia has hauled malted barley, coffee beans, lumber, flour, beer, cheese, pumpkins, apparel, cider, furniture, and much more. It also supplies galas/events, deliver to food banks and pantries, and transport of wholesale and individual cargoes. While its unlikely that such transport will supply Manhattan easily, that is certain, still entertaining the possibility of such supply chains, by ensuring the docking infrastructure is still functional and not transformed into yet another entertainment zone, seems prudent. Except, of course, fossil energy is still cheap, enormously power dense and transportable. Most of the world’s cargo traffic today is fossil energy. And gas in New York is in the mid $3.50 a gallon. California its just under $5.00. Many fewer EVs in NYC than LA, but, hey, what is the need when fuel remains relatively less expensive? The goods traffic to supply the over 8 million NYC residents, and especially Manhattan is enormous. Manhattan is supplied by trucks. Trucks bring everything in. To maintain that flow into the future, an electric future, will be enormously complex, with charging stations scattered where? Charging those heavy duty trucks will require enormous new electricity infrastructure. Will they charge in the surrounding Burroughs?
Downtown, So Ho, the Village, have had less architectural intrusion it seems from gigantic buildings, but not from gentrification with the same global brands as in Chelsea and the upper East side. Rents are so high – as in many cities now – that they drive out nearly everyone else. How is it that people are not saturated by the sameness? Can they really be viable? What is going on?
The rich/poor divide is so much more evident in NYC than in LA, where sprawl sort of obscures the extremes, except of course in the hills. In NYC its all so accessible, so visible, it is a caricature of itself as one of my colleagues said. And the concentration of wealth also dwarfs LA, LA does not have the Barry Dillers and Von Furstenbergs, the Rockefellers, Bloomberg, Lauder and more. LA has new money that is not vested in place, the philanthropy is pitiful in comparison, though there is wealth. Its simply less concerned with place and showmanship of grand projects. We do have a handful of those people, Broad, Resnick, Pritzker, Annenberg. But its overall a bit thin. And LA is also not the S.F. Bay Area which has more historic money, as well as the Tech sector. So LA lags in that regard, but maybe gives it more vibrancy and independence?
New York is definitely diverse, different languages spoken on the street, the cashier at Fairway from Togo, the taxi driver from Mali, it is a front line for immigration from Europe, Africa and the Caribbean. I could not discern the wave of immigrants that is written about in the press but perhaps I was not in the right neighborhoods, likely not. I did go to the gentrified and gentrifying Brooklyn. Atlantic Ave has lovely independent shops, for now, and Red Hook seems to retain some authenticity, though I walked by new condominiums on Sullivan street where, literally, parked in the drive ways were 3 repetitions of Tesla, Porsche, Tesla Porsche, Tesla Porsche in front of each unit. New sterile condominiums with the bottom floor a garage and the first floor elevated due to flood risk. It still retains character though, funky 2 story buildings that likely got heavily flooded, some bars, and newer eateries. The port – not too active – the waterfront, is right there with historic warehouses, many seemingly still in some kind of use. You can see the statue of liberty from there. Very interesting area.
Manhattan is exceptional in the U.S. Its density is unreplicated anywhere in the country. It is totally accessible without a car, and super accessible with an e-bike, but the surrounding Burroughs are long train rides that are not cheap. Many are relatively dense with common wall rowhouses, but other outlying Burroughs not at all. So many questions, all the while the current mayor is concerned with the ‘chaos’ caused by e-delivery bikes!
Manhattan does not seem survivable over the long term, and NYC’s future is challenging to imagine sustaining with renewable energy resources unless they are vast, as well as ubiquitous everywhere. I saw very little solar. How can its built infrastructure transition to move to a more modest consumption of energy? It seems that the ‘fixed’ infrastructure of the increasingly large and glass covered buildings may need to be abandoned at some point, leaving a kind of dystopic urban fabric of vacant buildings and the concentration of residents in ones that can be parsimoniously supplied with renewables. I am reminded of Kim Stanley Robinson’s New York 2140!
