Säule, Schlucht, Erscheinung

Sixth Avenue at Rockefeller Center, looking south.  ©1978 Blake Andrews.

NEW YORK, CHICAGO, DUBAI, FLORIDA, SAN FRANCISCO, TORONTO, SÃO PAULO, LOS ANGELES. 

In the last post about Cleveland, I briefly mentioned in passing a unique urban phenomenon, the visual effect of rows of tall buildings arranged along a city street. I've noticed this for years, and mentioning it made me think about its varieties and ways to describe it. While I can't offer an academic analysis here, I'm going to try to briefly explore it a bit further. 

Manhattan, from Carmen Ereddarter's blog.

While others may have long since recognized this phenomenon as well, I am not sure if this urban distinction has undergone appellation. It seems to be born out of uniquely American urban conditions: the downtown cores of classic large American cities, where tall buildings are arranged in orthogonal grids, the blocks equally spaced apart, filling up the envelope of each property in a uniform fashion, so that the fronts of each block align. The buildings not necessarily skyscrapers, but are sufficiently tall as to suggest a wall along either side of the street, as a hedge-row on a country lane, interrupted only by cross-streets. The buildings develop a conversational relationship with one another; each block becomes a component of a larger arrangement. 

3rd Avenue, looking north. Photo from Kelly van der Kwast. 

I. Säule and Zeile

Manhattan would be both the most recognized and recorded, but also the largest and most expressive example of this: the island's density stretching along its numbered avenues for six or seven miles in straight lines. It is one of the most quintessential aspects of Manhattan's appearance, although I am not sure it has ever been specifically given a name, although Manhattan's deep density of full-block buildings has been described as canyons of buildings, which partially describes the phenomenon.

State Street in Chicago's Loop, looking north. 

But it is not limited to New York. Chicago’s Loop expresses this aspect as well, although Chicago's central business district, while quite large, is much smaller and less elongated than Manhattan. The Loop has a clear limit, giving way to warehouse districts and residential areas, whereas Manhattan's avenues vanish, and its cross-streets disappear into the waterfront. Visually, constructed canyons seem carved in each cardinal coordinate.

There are many other examples; as the effect momentarily occurs one street in a small downtown like Cleveland, there are probably countless individual examples in dozens of American cities with a sufficient building stock and suitably wide, straight streets, built up with adequately tall buildings—Washington and Paris are too low to the street to have the affect appear.

A near-appearance of the phenomenon on Commissioner's Street in Johannesburg.

It would be possible to capture this atmosphere in large, grid-array downtowns in Vancouver or Houston, and perhaps Sydney or Melbourne—any place where a forest of skyscrapers is arranged across a rigid orthogonal street pattern, from Beijing to Buenos Aires. Maybe not so much London, Paris, Hong Kong or Kuala Lumpur, but here and there in Johannesburg, perhaps the Ginza ward of Tokyo.

Avenida Paulista, from Wikipedia. 

São Paulo expresses it at least on the mammoth Avenida Paulista, if not elsewhere in its vast forest of high-rise buildings, although the city does not have strict grid system. An interesting detail of Avenida Paulista is the pyramidal Edificio FIESP, photogenic for breaking up the slab-wall affect the regularly-intervaled façades.

Photo of Avenida Paulista and the FIESP Building, by Panoramio user Rmartinipoa.

Downtown San Francisco's financial district somewhat weakly presents this phenomenon, with the added effect of the canyon floor sweeping up the steep hillsides at the far end of each street, or looking out towards the Bay, aligning with the span of the Bay Bridge.

The Streets of San Francisco.

II. Schlange-Schlucht

More linear than the mile-long boulevards of Manhattan are places where dense clusters of high-value real estate are divided into roughly equal sites, but the conditions only yield a single row of high-rise buildings. This is a typically littoral condition: it recalls the heavily urbanized coast of Southern Florida, for example, and other locations where high-rise towers, mostly residential or hotels, march along a main street that follows the coastline, like Cancún. However, in the case of typically-curvacious resort-style architecture, there is not enough alignment for the full effect to register.

The near-effect seen in Sunny Isles, Florida. ©2014 Bauzeitgeist. 

The most distinct difference between this linear row and that of an American downtown is that the arrangement is only one block wide on either side. While not necessarily evident from a straight-on perspective down this one street, the edges of vision, and the visual understanding of the wider urban area, imply that the density discontinues after only one row of buildings.

The best example of this that I know of is Sheikh Zayed Road in Dubai, which is both long, wide, and evenly spaced with high rises, some extremely tall, columns on either side. Although Dubai is a littoral city, Sheikh Zayed Road itself is away from the beachfront, and the single rows of skyscrapers stand with low-rise buildings behind, or nothing but dry lots of open desert. Dubai's mid-town does not spread across a gridded district of regular built density, but stretches on either side of a single major street.

Images of Sheikh Zayed Road in Dubai from Wikipedia and FlashyDubai.com. 

III. Hyper-Schlange Schlucht Straße

Related to the narrow hedge-row effect of Sheikh Zayed Road, a third variety of this phenomenon emphasizes the appearance of tall buildings fronting a significant thoroughfare in an otherwise low-rise environment, often in the case where a major street connects multiple centers of a sprawling metropolis. While the façade-wall effect is visible along the prospect itself, it is no longer set out along a grid of blocks. The hedge-row effect is more clearly understood from above, where the contrast in height is more evident.

Mid-Wilshire, Los Angeles.  

The two large examples that come to mind are Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles and Yonge Street in Toronto.

If sprawling Los Angeles has a Broadway, it is Wilshire, which curves at several points along the low foothills as it stretches more than a dozen miles, from downtown Los Angeles through affluent West L.A. towards the Pacific Ocean, terminating in Santa Monica. L.A. is perhaps too famous for it’s sprawl, when it really a city of average density, and Wilshire provides one of it’s most distinct urban moments.

Whether by accident of real estate value or determined more didactically by zoning, either side of this thoroughfare is lined with mostly rectangular office blocks, passing through various clusters and campuses of high-rises at downtown LA and Century City, but otherwise distinct from the low-rise and often residential neighborhoods beyond the rows of columns. As with Sheikh Zayed Road, the contrast is most distinct from the air.

Yonge Street is supposedly the longest street in the world, but that's alway struck me as a rather technical description for the world street, as opposed to calling something a road, or a route, which can stretch from one side of a country to another. These are frequently lined with a high density and sufficient volume of bland boxes, which are forgettable alone orchestrate a remarkable visual affect.

Toronto looking north  from the CN Tower ©2011 Bauzeitgeist. 

However, the claim to the title is augmented by the extraordinary phenomenon of Yonge Stretching from the financial district of downtown Toronto for miles to the north. Like Wilshire, Yonge passes through and connects perpendicular clusters of mid-rise buildings where it crosses first Bloor Street and St. Clair, all the way to North York, a suburban district nearly ten miles from the lakefront. The astonishing Vancouverization of Toronto, which has accelerated with the real estate boom in the last ten years, is occurring mostly near the waterfront areas of downtown but is also thickening the effect of this corridor of high-rises, stretching to a length of any of Manhattan's avenues. It is quite convenient to observe this effect without having to board an airplane, as the observation deck of the CN Tower provides an excellent vantage point. 

Toronto looking north  from the CN Tower ©2011 Bauzeitgeist. 

Mitwerken Sie die Hässlichkeit der Welt

On the afternoon of May 31st, Istanbul's Taksim Square filled with the people. Residents gathered in Gezi Park to protest the uprooting of old sycamore trees by local authorities, the first physical act by the government to unilaterally moved ahead with a plan to replace the open space with an ersatz, Ottoman-style shopping arcarde. I half-sarcastically tweeted:

Although the protests in Istanbul, which would later spread across Turkey, were not solely about the the fate of this public space, it was the lack of public input into the transformation of a beloved, historic park into a kitschy shopping mall (and the corruption lubricating real estate speculation) that initially drove people to assemble. 

Likewise, while the very-similar mass protests that filled the streets of Brazilian cities earlier this month were about broad issues of economic and social inequality, they started as the airing of grievances against a hike in municipal bus fares, and came to encompass discontent over the government spending spree on massive sports stadia for international events, and the corruption that such deals involve. 

Renderings of Taksim Square with new mall.

In earlier (and on-going) uprisings in Bahrain and Cairo, public spaces such as Pearl Roundabout and Tahrir Square became symbols for the protests that they hosted. The issues in both Brazil and Turkey are political and social struggles that go beyond spatial debates; indeed, government concessions on Gezi Park's fate in Istanbul and bus fare rates in Sao Paulo did not diffuse the protests.

Yet, the events in both Turkey and Brazil originated in and are embodied by issues of architecture, urban planning, and public space. Rather than simply platforms on which protests take place, public spaces, and their access, use, purpose, and design are what these crowds are asserting as their right, what they value and what they demand to have control over.

"'People are going hungry and the government builds stadiums,' said Eleuntina Scuilgaro, an 83-year-old pensioner at the protests here in São Paulo." - New York Times, June 18, 2013

In a series blog posts at the New Yorker about the Gezi Park protests, American journalist Elif Batuman employed the Benjaminian term Aesthetic-Political Controversy to describe the issues which brought the crowds into the square and eventually into confrontation with the authorities. In some of the world's largest, fastest-growing cities, citizens were taking to the streets to demonstrate their frustration at a corrupt, unfair system that has been usurping tax money and urban space for the benefit of a few.

"...many of the proposed transportation projects were shelved or delayed -- such as a bus lane in the northeastern city of Salvador and a light-rail trolley in Brasilia -- while work on stadiums moved forward." -Bloomberg, July 10, 2013

Brazil and Turkey have been held aloft in the last decade as prime examples of globalization's inarguable virtue: fast growing GDPs, physically manifested by fast-developing cities, which were bequeathed with a shiny new trophies of global luxury, especially high-end shopping malls, high-rise apartment buildings, such as those which have been invading Istanbul. More severe iterations consist of Brazil's World Cup soccer stadia and Istanbul's bizarre litany of ahistorical megaprojects, of which Taksim Square's alteration was only the most centrally located, not nearly the most ambitious. 

Recent media coverage of Brazil and Istanbul reveal just how much of a shift these protests are from this globalization-success story. As recently as last October, the appearance of glass skyscrapers over the minarets of Istanbul was a sign of unquestionable progress- and the smart leadership that goes with it: Istanbul was a city with a growing private equity and property scene, 200 international non-stop flights, plans for the world's biggest airport. This lead it to be crowned by globalization's ultimate accolade: The Emerging Hub. (In fairness, the FT's subsequent report was slightly more balanced and hesitant on this new Istanbul, hinting at dissent for these massive projects, including at Taksim, while trotting many of the same global-growth bromides). 

Headline photos from FT's October 2012 Articles about Istanbul becoming a "Global Hub"

On the eve of the eruption of Gezi Park's occupation, this formula was lucidly and loquaciously summarized by an unintentionally ironic,  fatally-timed video on Istanbul's dreamy progress in Monocle, which perfectly concludes with a eye-watering optimism towards Istanbul's candidacy for the 2020 Summer Olympics. (Subheading: "With the city’s bid to host the 2020 Olympics in full swing, the fabric of Istanbul is shaping up. We meet the cultural and commercial players flexing their muscles." Tags: "2020 Olympic Bid, Urbanism"). The narrator speaks of Istanbul's "renaissance," and Turkey's "endless ambition to become a global powerhouse...a global hub for businesspeople" and references "old buildings replaced with new structures." The video is worth watching not only for its avant le deluge cluelessness, but especially for the brief remarks by renown author Orhan Pamuk, who desribes contemporary Istanbul as "sugary."

Equally notable in terms of poor timing leading to unintentional irony is Monocle's video covering early July's New Cities Summit in Sao Paulo. The conference was titled "The Human City" and promised, according Monocle's video, "How to make cities listen better to their residents," and, in the case of Sao Paulo, "how to turn this forest of highrises into a city that works for everyone," while Sao Paulo continues to cultivate a "rich, complex global brand." 

Still shot from Monocle's video on Sao Paulo, July 2013.

The New Cities Summit featured not just "city fixers and financial folks" but academic Saskia Sassen, and while the conference clearly did not connect adequately with the working class of Sao Paulo to head off a protests (or with the transit authority in considering hiking fares), one of the more thoughtful analysis of the protests was offered by New Cities Chairman John Rossant in a televised interview on France24, in which he speaks directly of inequality, and its embodiment in a segregated built environment, as a source of discontent. Rossant also wrote an op-ed in the Financial Times, although his written words were much blander, without any mention of inequality or corruption. 

Despite my tweet's call to attention, much of the architectural media had little coverage of the protests. Domus had a comprehensive first-hand account of the park occupation, but that publication's most insightful coverage of Istanbul's current condition was a feature from last year on Paolo di Pietri's gently ominous photographs of high-rises and real estate developments on Istanbul's fringe.

Paola de Pietri, Istanbul New Stories, via Domus

Gezi Park's events have been well covered at Archinect, thanks largely to that site's Turkish-born editor, Orhan Ayyüce. As with most posts at Archinect, his short posts didn't delve deeply into the issue, but the comments section did provide one of the few venues for architects and designers to discuss Istanbul's development and the protests, and Ayyüce seemed well-connected to Turkish architects and academics covering the protests and surrounding issues.  Like Batuman, Ayyüce suggests that Turkey's domestic design profession, and its output will be profoundly altered and impacted by the events of the last eight weeks. 

Kartal District plan, by Zaha Hadid Architects, 2005.

The decision to demolish the park is really a most recent assault in accordance with the over commercialization of this historic city of 16 million people. The blunt action to send bulldozers to uproot the trees certainly hit a nerve with thousands of protesters who are fed up with government's draconian measures of late, threatening the basic liberties of Turkish society at large and the invasion of the publicness of the open spaces in Turkey's largest city. The oppressively social and urbanistic nature of the unilateral action of the government and the regional authorities seem to hit a particular nerve with the public who has been occupying the park in order to save it with an unprecedented determination.This is an important turning point in Turkish urbanism when the public is showing an increasing resistance to violent police action never seen before for the urban design policies of the government. This is a behind the doors deal of the government with their favored development partners for consumerist profit making. This is at the cost of public access to much needed green spaces in this densely overbuilt city. This is a top down urban policy repeated across in this world treasure city with 4000 years of cultural history. -Orhan Ayyüce, Archinect

Hyperallergic also had an excellent first-hand account of Gezi Park's occupation, by Jesse Honsa:

For too long residents of the city have sat by as their government incrementally destroyed Istanbul, the beautiful ancient seat of the Byzantine and Ottoman Empires. Forced evictions clear the way for tabula rasa urban renewal in historic districts, the Turkish housing authority (TOKI) is building luxury gated communities in infinite quantity, and a new bridge and airport in the forest to the north will write the death certificate on the city’s source of oxygen. This resistance has been less of a political demonstration and more of a territorial battle: citizens physically defending their beloved city of winding streets and charming old facades from the global forces that want to turn it into a Dubai, a commodity of glass and highways. -Jesse Honsa on Hyperallergic

While Turkey's media, with state oversight, have been a largely unreliable source of coverage of the protests, it is interesting to note that in May a court ruled that "three massive skyscrapers" on the edge of Istanbul had to be torn down, as they were spoling Istanbul's historic silhouette." This month, as police and protesters fought in Gezi Park, Turkey's parliament passed an omnibus bill to protect the historic skylines of Turkish cities from such ruination. 

These gestures just patch over bigger, more difficult issues, like trying to make a crumbling structure new by painting the outside. Until more of the city's residents feel that they have a say in, and a benefit from, the changes to their urban spaces, those alterations will not be seen as improvements, and will be resisted, not only for their appearance, their edifice and bulk, but for their shadows: the unfair dirty deals, the embezzlement and bribery that their sleek façades conceal. 

In the march of progress of economies and countries, journalists (and governments) should realize that the development of civic protest and democratic assembly are part of a society's improvement. And when lines are drawn between people and power, architects and urban planners should be conscious of which side they are on.