“How should we design the cities of our dreams?
Will Doig
This is the first story in a new series called Dream City, which will explore the way we’re designing our cities of the future, cities in which we want to live, right now. Two more stories will follow this week. Tomorrow, we’ll examine the way cities are growing with creative use of their waterfronts. And on Tuesday, we’ll look at the growing trend of removing freeways from downtown to create new pedestrian spaces.
New York has turned large swaths of Broadway over to bikes, benches and cafes. Los Angeles is going all-in on a plan to turn its car-addicted populace into rail commuters. And Minneapolis, the frostiest city of the Frost Belt, is creating a sophisticated citywide bike trail system that has made it the No. 1 city in the country for bicycling.
America’s urban reboot is in full swing. The awe-inspiring mega-projects — the High Lines and the Subways to the Sea — are being held up as a sign that cities are back. But look at the crowded roster of schemes being hatched below the radar, and it’s easy to believe that the new era is just now getting started. New Orleans is plotting to tear down an elevated expressway and replace it with a tree-lined boulevard that would reunite two historic neighborhoods isolated for half a century. In Brooklyn, a brand-new 15,000-square-foot rooftop farm is expected to produce 100 tons of greens for the city every year. San Francisco is planting electronic sensors in parking spaces that could eventually guide drivers toward empty spots. Streetcars are being resurrected from Tucson to Washington. Bike-share systems are going viral.
The gleeful sense of aspiration coursing through cities today is more than mere “urban renewal.” The very assumptions about what makes a city a city are being challenged. We’re in a period of spectacular innovation and a dizzying demographic shift that 50 years from now might make the great migration to the suburbs look minor by comparison. Time was, and not that long ago, crime was swallowing cities whole. Today you can sleep in Zuccotti Park without being mugged. (Hell, you’ll hardly smudge your pajamas.) But the protests against economic inequality that are rumbling through our cities right now are also a sign of the dissonance that hums just below the surface of this new urban era. They’re a reminder that if the young people occupying Wall Street are going to keep our cities evolving, then the old model — gentrification by fiat — will need to change, as well.”
Via: Salon
Image: Salon/Mignon Khargie
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