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|12.28.04 @ 5:18PM|#
This guy doesn't know much about urban planners.
"With five major thoroughfares crashing into each other at a central square, it is an urban planner�s nightmare�gritty, chaotic, and full of businesses ranging from coffee shops to Thai restaurants"
Sounds more like a dream come true to me. Where does this guy get his knowledge of urban planning from? "The Fountainhead?" I'll tell you all a little secret - you know those sterile, government-created, gigantic, boring places you all point to as examples of the failure of city planning? We City Planners do the same thing. Only better, and without as many gross factual errors or internal contradictions.
Notice how he refers to the district as "relatively untouched." Relatively, eh? As in, it has been touched. In fact, every part of a major European city like Berlin has been heavily planned.
This is actually an essay about one form of urban planning - that of the 20th Century, emphasizing uniformity, rationality, hierarchy, and efficiency - vs. another - that of the late 20th and 21st Century, emphasizing diversity, humaneness, equality, and intimacy. But a narrative like that isn't going to get published in Reason, now is it?
drf|12.28.04 @ 5:20PM|#
the first time i visited berlin was in the 70s. i don't remember much - all of europe sorta blended together. i remember we couldn't see our relatives, but i discovered they weren't worth visiting.
then i was there in the 80s before "Die Wende". and i was again there to pound out pieces of the wall in may of 1990.
berlin has changed tremendously over the years. Pottsdamer platz is not to be recognized. the ku' damm is as it ever was, but the wierdos at the hollow tooth weren't there this time.
one of my best friends lived in the eastern zone for a while before transferring. he noted that housing and retail were the only two things in abundance in berlin.
the reichstag, brandenburger tor, unter den linden and that area along the spree has changed, not for the better. it resembles a european's worst fantasy of what "modern" should be.
the best thing to come out of berlin is and remains "Die Aerzte". the best pop-punk band around (kinda like "presidents of the USA").
Pfiat Ei'
drf
|12.28.04 @ 5:24PM|#
All in all, though, he makes a good point about the City getting too far out ahead of the market. You can't really plan a place to be dramatically different from what it would be without any public sector involvement at all. You can make it a better city neighborhood, by pushing amenities and insisting on quality construction and requiring a better interface with its surroundings, but if the market (danger: gross anthropomorphism ahead) wants it to be a neighborhood commercial hub, it's either going to be a neighborhood commericial hub, or it's going to be a failed project.
The author also gets into some interesting territory about the change in the role of the city center. The center is no longer in the middle of the neighborhoods - it IS a neighborhood. Trying to create an old-style Central Business District is a hopeless cause.
|12.28.04 @ 5:41PM|#
drf,
I liked Berlin when I first saw it in 2000 (and my ideas of the city came from war and spy movies). The neighbourhoods were nice, the public and developped spaces either bland or timidly daring but any city with so many bullet holes can't be bad. They did a nice job fixing the place up after the war.
And you are correct, Die Aerzte totally rock, especially Farin Urlaub.
QFMC cos. V
Semolina Pilchard|12.28.04 @ 6:36PM|#
"QFMC cos. V"
Huh?
|12.28.04 @ 7:32PM|#
In case Fabius doesn't answer, my bet is that QFMC stands for "Quintus Fabius Maximus Cunctator", and, with less certainty, I guess that "cos. V" means that he was consul five times. Fabius--the original, not the Hit & Run commentator--was a Roman general who faced and was largely successful against Hannibal. He remains famous for his delaying actions (now known as "Fabian tactics").
Hopefully, Fabius can explain further, because my knowledge of Roman history is more than exhausted :)
Semolina Pilchard|12.28.04 @ 7:39PM|#
Ahh, I see. Sounds like as good an explanation as any.
If that is indeed the case -- if it is indeed a tagline of sorts -- perhaps Mr. Fabius should put it in bold or italic or something. As it is, it looks simply like another line of text -- a final paragraph to his post. I'm sure I'm not the only one who's sat there trying to figure out what the apparent sentence means, when in fact it's simply a sign-off.
And yes, that's right, I have nothing better on which to focus my attention at the moment.
|12.28.04 @ 11:25PM|#
The article might be subtitled "The failure of a CERTAIN KIND of city planning". Most urban planning, after all, does NOT revolve around procuring vast subsidies for private companies to put up sterile corporate headquarters. Rather, most urban planning is involved with examining trends and implementing small changes here and there in order to foster more livable cities. Yes, there are grand schemes, but usually involving (say) transportation, which has regional implications and therefore requires a grand scheme. The sort of corporate mega-headquarters in Berlin represents a type of planning that was disproved long ago, and has many examples of failures here in the USA (see Renaissance Towers in Detroit or Empire State Plaza in Albany NY) - which is why we don't practice it anymore.
|12.29.04 @ 7:20AM|#
First he defeated passion, then he defeated Hannibal.
|12.29.04 @ 9:30AM|#
What are the criteria that make up livability? I see this word all the time, but I don't understand it. Is it crime rates? Cost of living?
|12.29.04 @ 9:33AM|#
Actually, Rhywun, that type of city planning still happens, although sports venues have largely replaced office towers. And while it has most certainly been disproven among city planners, it remains popular among politicians, who continue to foist it upon us. :-(
|12.29.04 @ 9:37AM|#
JL, "livability" is a broad term, but it basically refers to quality of life - convenience, comfort, safety, appeal, and the perception thereof.
|12.29.04 @ 9:55AM|#
JL, "livability" is a broad term, but it basically refers to quality of life - convenience, comfort, safety, appeal, and the perception thereof.
As perceived by whom? I assume you mean the residents of and visitors to the area. I guess what gets me most about urban planning is its central nature. I'd be perfectly happy to live in a poorly planned area if I had more freedom to do as I pleased with my property, if I owned any in a city. I guess this is why I prefer rural areas to urban (and suburban) ones.
One thing I will say in favor of urban planning (done right) is that it's nice to have easy access to a city center when I need to do "hit-and-fade" shopping or attend a concert or sporting event and get the hell out.
|12.29.04 @ 10:21AM|#
"As perceived by whom?"
Good question. In different areas, there are different relevant publics. If the main road through a neighborhood is widened, it could make the next neighborhood over more livable by improving its access to the highway, while making the cut-through neighborhood less livable by increasing traffic impacts on residents. So whose livability is more important? Who gets to decide?
|12.29.04 @ 11:22AM|#
I met a guy once from a small city(Berryville) in northern virginia that was told by the city that he could not open a bar where the entrance was down an ally (Swingers style). The city told him that they follow the same city planning guidelines that are used in Chicago and that a bar must have a visable sign and an entrance on the street.
|12.29.04 @ 9:01PM|#
I'd be perfectly happy to live in a poorly planned area if I had more freedom to do as I pleased with my property, if I owned any in a city. I guess this is why I prefer rural areas to urban (and suburban) ones.
I guess that's why I prefer you live in a rural area too :-)
Part of "livability" in the city is precisely that you CAN'T do whatever the hell you want with your property. I know that's antithetical to everyone's nature here, but them's the breaks.
One thing I will say in favor of urban planning (done right) is that it's nice to have easy access to a city center when I need to do "hit-and-fade" shopping or attend a concert or sporting event and get the hell out.
Lucky for you, this was accomplished by running expressways through and around every center city in the country, displacing thousands (if not millions) of houses and business, turning roughly half the space of every downtown into parking lots, and thereby rendering these areas less... livable for the rest of us.