I had a recent column in Governing inspired by my experience at the old Whitney estate on Long Island, called Greentree. See it here.
Author Archives: Alex Marshall
Big Cities, Big Data: Who Is In Charge?
Here’s a new story of mine that came out in the February issue of Metropolis Magazine on the concept and phenomena of Smart Cities. It’s a huge subject. Writing about it was like trying to swallow an elephant. I did my best though. Just take what I say as a first word, not a last. My big thought is that we can’t embrace new technologies without thinking about who is in charge of them. Technology is like fire. It can be used for good or evil. As technologies become force multipliers for cities, it’s important that the good guys are in charge. To me, the good guys are the public.
Thou Art As Fair As . . . A Subway
I watching this old movie over the weekend: “Algiers.” At one point, the debonair jewel thief played by Charles Boyer, looks into the eyes of the beautiful, sophisticated French damsel, played by Hedy Lamarr, and says: “You remind me of Paris. You remind me of the subway.”
Even my nine-year-old son Max expressed his surprise at that: “Does she reminds him of old gum stuck on the sidewalk, and dirty walls?”
Apparently Boyer’s character meant the comparison as a fully natural, unironic compliment. After the subway he listed several other beautiful things in Paris that Hedy Lamarr’s character’s beautiful visage and personage reminded him of.
In 1938, the subway in Paris (founded 1900), similar to New York’s (1904), would have been 38 years old, with some lines probably a lot newer. Perhaps Boyer’s character was thinking of the beautiful wrought-iron, art-nouveau subway entrances. Or maybe the trains and platforms had such a sheen of newness and beauty that they seemed a natural thing to compare a lovely woman to.
Either way, that would be a good place to return back to the future to. When subways are seen as things of beauty.
Gov. Christie Stumbles on Hudson River Crossing Politics
There are bucket fulls of schadenfreude – taking delight in your enemy’s troubles – from those who supported the ARC tunnel under the Hudson River, as they watch Gov. Chris Christie get impaled on being mean over restrictions on a bridge across that same river, in order to get back at a non-supporter in an adjacent town. I have to admit I feel some of this myself. I was a big supporter of the ARC tunnel, and by killing it, Gov. Christie sacrificed his state’s future. He clearly did it for political reasons: yet he didn’t suffer for it. Not fair. Now he is getting some just desserts.
Kimmelman Disses New Skyscrapers
Michael Kimmelman, the architecture and all around cities critic for The New York Times, largely disses most of the supertall skyscrapers going up. It was a good column, even though I like aesthetically most of the new towers more than him. He does though a good job of raising the important issues around the buildings, including whether their owners are paying taxes. In general, he’s done a truly outstanding job at being an urban design critic for the paper, as opposed to just critiquing individual buildings. I sent Michael a note – we’ve briefly met here and there – about my recent column where I posit that there is a relationship between the height of skyscrapers, and the level of income inequality in the society. Here’s the link again, and I hope he checks is out.
High Income Inequality Promotes High Buildings. Maybe
I love this idea of mine, that there may be a correlation and perhaps some causation between extremes of income inequality, and the construction of really tall buildings. Here’s my latest Governing column, which is all about that.
Win My First Book!
How cool is this? Global Site Plans, an urban planning company, is raffling off copies of my 2001 book, How Cities Work, and running a new review of it. Please enter! It’s free. Hard not to like a review that begins with this headline: “12 Years Later ‘How Cities Work’ is Still A Must-Read”
Speech at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor
I’m talking about my latest book The Surprising Design of Market Economies at the Taubman School of Architecture and urban planning at the University of Michigan tomorrow, Nov. 19th, at 6:30 pm. Come on out. Everyone is welcome. The talk is sponsored by the architecture school and the SMART transportation center, which is joint project of the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute, and the Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning. (That was a mouthful.) I’m going to focus more on transportation, which makes sense given the audience and venue.
High Skyscrapers and High Income Inequality
I have a story coming out soon on this subject, so before I forget, I’m posting an old story I had out on this same subject. Here’s the link and the full text. http://www.rpa.org/spotlight/commanding-heights This is from the newsletter, Spotlight on the Region, of the Regional Plan Association, where I’m a Senior Fellow.
The Commanding Heights
As a fan of both architecture and economics, it’s disconcerting to conclude there is a connection between something I like aesthetically, which is tall buildings, and something I don’t like, which is greater inequality of wealth and income in a society. But that’s exactly what I’m concluding.
I don’t recall exactly when I began to notice this, but at some point I found myself noticing that the places that had lots of tall buildings seemed to be in countries with more inequitable distribution of resources. I hadn’t done any formal study, but when I thought about soaring skyscrapers I thought of New York City, Chicago, and a slew of Asian cities, such as Kuala Lumpur, Shanghai and Dubai.
Then I thought about prosperous countries that, at least in my mind’s eye, did not have as many tall buildings. France, Germany, Holland and all the countries of Western Europe came to mind. Japan came to mind. Most of the classic cities of Europe, such as Paris, Barcelona or Copenhagen are relatively low-rise environments. And perhaps not incidentally, these countries also have a much more even distribution of wealth than either the United States or many developing Asian countries.
Now this was disturbing. The chrome spire of the Chrysler Building had long lifted my step when I spotted it coming out of a subway. How sad to think it might be associated with not only great height, but great monetary distances between rich and poor.
To quench my curiosity, I checked out my hunch with a little research recently. As a starting point, I looked at the world’s tallest buildings on Emporis, a database on buildings developed by an international real estate company. Then I matched it with a list of income inequality of countries as found in Wikipedia, the open source online encyclopedia. The author measured the income inequality of countries as defined by their Gini Coefficient, which is a standard statistical tool to measure inequality.
The picture that emerges is not black and white, in part because there is no single definition of skyscraper. But some trends emerge. The European Union and Japan, which in general top the list in terms of having more equitable economies, have fewer tall buildings in general and in particular have fewer of the really soaring skyscrapers, the ones that top the charts. Of the top 100 tallest buildings according to Emporis, which range from the 101 story tower in Taipei at 1671 feet in position number one, to the New Century Plaza Tower in Nanjing in China at 52 stories and 837 feet, only three are in Japan or Western Europe. And those are in relatively low positions, with the Yokohama Landmark Tower in Jpan at 39th place, and two towers in Frankfurt at 90 and 94th.
The majority of the tallest 100 skyscapers are in the United States, (35), and China (27). It is a remarkable story to see how China, which a generation ago probably had no tall buildings, now has almost as many as the United States. The other countries in the top 100, in order of the number of buildings they had, were Dubai (7), Malaysia (3), Australia (3), Canada (3), Singapore (3), Saudi Arabia (2), Taiwan (2), Bahrain (2), Germany (2), South Korea (2), Qatar (1), Russia (1), Philippines (1), Thailand (1), North Korea (1), and Japan (1). This list of countries mostly repeats itself when I looked at the top 200 tallest buildings. Again, the USA and China dominated, with a smattering of other countries listed above.
In general, the countries that have the bulk of the skyscrapers fare poorly on the inequality rankings. The United States and China rank quite low in income equality, at 73rd and 85th out of 126 countries. Part of China’s inequity ranking is shown in that it still actually has a per capita income of about $1700 per year, less than Guatemala. Given that, it’s amazing it’s been able to lead the world in production of skyscrapers. Other countries on the top 200 list also ranked low. Malaysia was at 98th; Singapore was at 85th in income equality.
So it would seem my hunch that there is some connection between the presence of really tall buildings and greater income inequality has something to it. But as my sister the epidemiologist likes to remind me, correlation is not causation. Perhaps it’s a simple coincidence, or dependent on other factors, that relates tall buildings to large gaps between rich and poor.
In addition, this picture may be changing. Japan has several really tall buildings under design or construction, and according to Emporis, rapidly growing Spain is leading Europe in the production of tall buildings. But turning to speculation, why might large inequities in wealth and income lead to taller buildings?
Well, the simplest explanation that comes to mind is that tall buildings are a physical manifestation of inequality. They are a physical example of the heights between rich and those less rich, and the ability of the former to dominate the latter.
I suspect that only people of great wealth can marshal the huge resources, both physical and political, to get a great tall building constructed. Skyscrapers, while great to look at, are not necessarily great to work in or around. They blot out the sun of their neighbors. They dominate their denizens by requiring long elevator rides. They dwarf their individual inhabitants. In that, is both the awe they generate and their inhumanity, or at least their lack of human scale.
In a more equitable political environment, where more people have more political power, I suspect really tall buildings are harder to construct. I think a similar thing is demonstrated when one looks at whether tall buildings are allowed on a prominent public waterfront. Only in cities where a few have great power is it possible to block access visually and physically to the waterfront. Sadly, this is too often the case in much of the Tri-state region.
Looking historically, there seems to be a correlation between building huge things and disparities between rich and poor. I remember traveling through the Loire Valley in France once, and seeing the huge chateaus built in the 1400s and 1500s. Then I traveled to Amsterdam, and saw the much lower-rise city, which even then was famous for a broader middle class and an absence of great individual wealth.
So what am I to draw from this? We are hardly likely to stop building skyscrapers. And to do so would be grasping the wrong end of the stick. Rather than judging tall buildings, it would be nice if we worked for a broader distribution of income in this country, and then it will be interesting to see what happens with those buildings.
A Castle or a Fortress: New Mayor de Blasio Has Some Choices
I put some thoughts about Bill de Blasio’s election here in Governing today, inspired by the old armory where he held his victory party, which happened to be across the street from my apartment. For understandable reasons, the editor at Governing cut some of the history lesson, and I put it here for those who are interested. Read the article first, and then the paragraphs below.
The city and state constructed these halls in the late 19th and early 20th century for a very unpopulist mission: quelling civil unrest, or crowd control. Explosive riots would periodically but unpredictably break out in New York every few years. They included the famous the draft riots of 1863 and less-known ones like the Thompkins Square Riot of 1874. The riots were often sparked by men striking or threatening to strike for better wages or to form unions, at a time when the extremes of wealth and poverty matched or exceeded our own. The city and state, on government budgets far thinner than today’s, constructed several dozens of these facilities around the city. They were seen as a way to deliver men with guns quickly to hotspots. They were built with “drill halls” large enough that citizen-militias in the many thousands could march under one roof. It’s said that Irish need not apply, because they were known to be frequent sympathizers to organized labor.
This history is known to few. Most New Yorkers associate armories with art shows and other pleasantries. Perhaps it could said to be appropriate symbolism for de Blasio to use one, given that de Blasio is talking about turning around a city that he says principally serves the rich, into serving everyone. He says he wants not to suppress the masses, but empower them.