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作者

来源

JOURNAL OF URBAN AFFAIRS,Vol.41,Issue2,P.277-279

语言

英文

关键字

作者单位

Stanford University

摘要

Peter Kresl sets out to examine “the ways in which, over time, architecture has been used to define and redefine a city, both visually and functionally, and to enhance its competitiveness” (p. 6). Through copious case studies of U.S., European, South American, Asian, and Middle Eastern cities, Kresl discusses exemplary efforts over time to magnify city identity. This challenge is supported by eight chapters, each of which explores an approach through architecture to expand or rejuvenate a city’s “economic viability and competitiveness” (p. 11).The first approach, attempting to revive a lagging community, offers examples from large cities such as Chicago, Pittsburgh, and Barcelona and smaller cities such as Santa Fe, New Mexico; Columbus, Indiana; and Bilbao. A century ago, Santa Fe rediscovered its own indigenous architectural legacy and gradually the community restored or built anew structures and spaces redolent of its Spanish origins. After the Great Fire of 1871, Chicago pioneered skyscraper architecture based on advances in iron-frame and, later, steel-frame structural engineering and the development of the safety passenger elevator. For a time, it was the nation’s premier center of tall building architecture. Columbus’s leaders financed the hiring of prominent mid-century architects who designed modernist buildings throughout this small city, creating a kind of citywide, open-air museum of architecture. In Bilbao, located in Spain’s Basque region, the iconic Guggenheim Museum, designed by Frank Gehry, opened in the 1990s. In cases such as these, the book illustrates how cities, once in decline, designed their way to a new identity.A second approach to renewal is demonstrated by cities that increased their standing as global business centers. Cases include New York, London, Paris, Shanghai, and Dubai. Among long-established commercial centers, large-scale urban redevelopment projects such as London’s Canary Wharf and Paris’s La Defense are featured. New York’s leadership among U.S. cities as an historic center of skyscraper iconography is extolled. Shanghai and Dubai, both more recently arrived global cities, have sought distinction in their quest for the world’s tallest buildings via state-sponsored development.The author expands on the tallest building theme in a subsequent chapter. He traces the many challenges to skyscraper construction such as wind sway, fire safety, underlying geology, and vertical transportation by ever more sophisticated elevator technology. Particulars of New York’s Empire State Building, Chrysler Building, World Trade Center’s Twin Towers, and One World Trade Center are described, as are Chicago’s Sears (now Willis) Tower, Kuala Lumpur’s Petronas Towers, and Dubai’s Burj Kalifa. Above all, Creating Cities emphasizes the sheer hubris and determination necessary among proponents and civic boosters to claim the title of the world’s tallest skyscraper. Somehow, it seems, bigger is always better. But, of course, this attribute often translates to financial profitability because prospective tenants in such buildings seek the prestige and visibility that come from having an architecturally distinctive address.Despite the heavy emphasis on tall buildings, Kresl points out, another approach to achieving economic viability and competitiveness is through construction of “transformative parks” (p. 78). After first discussing New York’s Central Park and Prospect Park and Chicago’s Grant Park and Burnham Park, the book moves on to consider three more recent park-building projects. As deindustrialization has redefined urban economies in the United States and Europe, cities have transformed former centers of manufacturing and transportation infrastructure. In Paris, the Promenade Plantee involved the conversion of a derelict elevated rail corridor to a pedestrian walkway. In conjunction with a new opera house, the Promenade Plantee stimulated commercial and residential development along its right-of-way, creating appealing cafes and restaurants for relaxation and nightlife.Similarly, New York’s High Line, a shorter span, converted an unused elevated freight line on the Lower West Side of Manhattan to a linear park. Completed in 2014, the project was financed primarily through private funding and has sprouted dozens of residential and office projects in its vicinity. Both linear parks have helped generate substantial economic growth and tax revenues along their corridors. Inspired by these developments, Chicago has launched another elevated pedestrian project, the Bloomingdale Trail. Incomplete at the time of the book’s publication, it is located entirely on city-owned rights-of-way and was to be entirely funded from public sources.The author next probes the elusive subject of “branding” cities. To promote growth, he argues, local leaders in some communities have created a particularly distinctive image for their community and marketed it to the world. Exhibit A is the Eiffel Tower in Paris, completed in 1889 for the city’s world’s fair. This iconic structure assumed a worldly status, branding the City of Light as a tourist destination, as well as a center of commerce, government, art, culture, and fashion. In the United States, Las Vegas—originally a small desert city—grew to become the nation’s premier destination for gambling and entertainment. Rather than build a single structure to emblemize its identity, local leaders created a complex of glitzy, neon-bedecked casinos.Later, as competition from legalized gambling proliferated in America, Las Vegas rebranded itself. Old casinos were demolished, replaced by huge fountains, a Ferris wheel, and reproductions of iconic structures—such as a miniature Eiffel Tower—from other parts of the world. My impression from reading this section is that Las Vegas’s current image is one part sin city and one part family-friendly Disneyland. Other city branding efforts discussed by the authors include the Gateway Arch in St. Louis, the Sydney Opera House, the Øresund Bridge-Tunnel (connecting Denmark and Sweden), Dubai’s Burj al Arab tower, and collections of buildings in Barcelona and Glasgow designed by noted architects.Subsequent chapters examine two other putative techniques used to define or redefine cities and enhance their competitiveness. Architectural projects in New York, Paris, Aalborg, Denmark; and Lausanne, Switzerland anchored campaigns to attract wealthy, young, and/or creative people. The last technique, involving strategies to create community, traces efforts in several European cities to erect social housing and supportive facilities for workers and their families. The book closes with two concluding chapters, offering summary comments on the eight approaches to redefining cities discussed previously.To my mind, Creating Cities could benefit from greater selectivity in both its examination of approaches to redefining cities and its choice of case studies. It was not always clear to me how some approaches were distinct from others. And some case studies did not impress me as either “defining” or “redefining” the communities in which they are located. (Indeed, the author occasionally agrees, pointing out these failures but leaving others for readers to figure out.) Moreover, the book suffers from a bloviated text and would have benefited from some judicious copyediting. For example, Kresl revisits communities such as Santa Fe, Columbus, and St. Louis, which had already been discussed in earlier sections. It wasn’t apparent to me what a second visit offered that wasn’t addressed in the first reference.Further evidence of poor editing is apparent in the text’s unrestrained use of the adjective congenial, which the author employs (by my count) 13 times to characterize designed environments of which he approves. So amorphous a modifier is this, the reader is left clueless as to Kresl’s intended meaning. Surely, some adroit copyediting could have sidelined such careless excesses. Documentation is another disappointment. The book contains a bibliography but, surprisingly, only a single one-sentence endnote appears (p. 182), leaving readers to deduce for themselves the sources from which the author drew insights and the clarification of his text references.Despite Kresl’s background as an economist and Ietri’s as a European geographer, the book will probably find its most receptive readership among architects, landscape architects, engineers, and urban planners. Both the narrative and the illustrations frolic in architectural description while giving the impression that people are ancillary to city image building. References to social systems and community appear, but one can easily read this volume feeling that its subject is entirely untouched by human hands. Readers in the humanities and social sciences, take note.Underlying Creating Cities is an abiding belief in the transformative power of environmental determinism—a theory that has been called into question by many critics, including those in the heyday of the federal urban renewal program (1949–1974). By rebuilding sections of a city, the theory goes, the social composition and economic base will be altered in ways that ultimately redound to the benefit of all. In truth, we learned, the new projects were too often favorable to middle- and upper-class people and institutions. Unfortunately, this book is largely silent on the fate of those who are swept aside by the bulldozers of progress. Furthermore, Creating Cities appears impervious to the idea that cities are captives of their regions. In the Midwest, for example, for every successful Chicago, Indianapolis, or Columbus, Indiana, there are struggling competitors such as St. Louis, Cleveland, or Detroit. Why? Because there simply isn’t enough economic activity to adequately sustain all of the once-great cities of that region. Thus, attempting to build a city out of its regional economic stagnation is a bit like performing the Heimlich maneuver on a victim suffering from myocardial infarction. One suspects that, all too often, iconic image-building architecture only succeeds in redistributing residual levels of capital and consumers across the urban landscape, robbing Peter to pay Paul, as it were.