The End of Urbanity; Reflections on Density & Modernism by Lou Cespedes
For the last month or so, Governor Andrew Cuomo has masterfully led daily morning briefings, updating New Yorkers on the important developments in our states fight against COVID-19. His briefing are a mix of information, humor, paternalism, and power, as he jousts against the Mayor of New York City, Bill DeBlasio, and journalists. These briefings are a new spectacle, a small window into the mind, manner and tenacity of our Governor in a time of great crisis. Whether you like him or not, there is little doubt he is the Governor we needed at this time, and he has shown poise and authority while showing us some of his own humanity. This is not something we often get to witness, a politician that understands the moment, and connects with his constituents in a way that reassures and displays high statecraft.
These very qualities, and the setting in which they are broadcast every day, harkens back to a time of power brokers. In the vacuum of our own Mayor’s ineffectiveness and weakened hand, Andrew Cuomo, has successfully cast himself in the mold of his father, as a Upstate spokesperson, splitting local politics along regional and national fault lines, and simultaneously performing for a national audience while informing his local subjects. These daily interventions provide a sense of security and stability that oftentimes cast his opinions as fact, even when those opinions run counter to the economic and social foundations of our city, framing our COVID reality as not only as an existential threat to us, the residents of this city, but also to “the city” itself. I don’t just mean New York City; I mean the very idea of “cities”.
When the briefings take place, the Governor spares no opportunity to explain that the reason why infections in New York City are so high is because of “density”. He says this repeatedly while invoking the importance of “social distancing” in our efforts to stem the spread of the virus. The cumulative effect of his comments on density undermine two important foundations of the contemporary city, public space, and hygiene, both critical projects with Modernism, and within regulations that govern contemporary zoning and building codes. If you recall, one of Robert Moses’s primary excuses for Urban Renewal and slum clearance in NYC, was hygiene.
Nearly 100 years ago, during The International Congress of Modern Architecture, (CIAM) the “Athens Charter”, a 1933 manifesto about urbanism and architecture was written after the First World War. Le Corbusier, it’s author and one of the founders of the modernist architecture movement in Europe wrote in Pt 2 Section 10:
“The interior conditions of a dwelling may constitute a slum, but its dilapidation is extended outside by the narrowness of dismal streets and the total absence of those verdant spaces, the generators of oxygen, which would be so favorable to the play of children. The cost of a structure erected centuries ago has long been amortized; yet its owner is still tacitly allowed to consider it a marketable commodity, in the guise of housing. Even though its habitable value may be nil, it continues with impunity, and at the expense of the species, to produce substantial income. A butcher would be condemned for the sale of rotten meat, but the building codes allow rotten dwellings to be forced on the poor. For the enrichment of a few selfish people, we tolerate appalling mortality rates and diseases of every kind, which impose crushing burdens on the entire community”
At the heart of Le’ Corbusier’s thesis was the relationship we have with open “public space” and the space of our individual “habitation”, but it is also about the relationship between urban areas and the suburbs, and the economic structure that buttresses our habitat, consumption patterns, work places, fiscal policy and politics. In short, by Cuomo giving density a bad rap, he may be inadvertently (or not) upending the economic rationale of how our city operates, how we value the built environment, how we work, commute, play and live. Our codes will undoubtedly attempt to adapt to these new psychological and physical realities, but it is entirely possible that the density that makes New York City sustainable may soon become a greater liability, while making smaller, shorter buildings, in open environments more desirable, and ultimately more expensive (and inaccessible) to most residents. In neighborhoods like our own, where density is reasonable, we may see property assessments rise very quickly as less density works its way toward becoming a greater taxable commodity, and more people flee Manhattan towards the suburbs, particularly those yet untapped extremities of Brooklyn.
I don’t believe that larger buildings will necessarily become slums, but a complete retooling of how we think of ourselves in urban environments in the age of “social distancing” and “self-quarantine” gives us clues about how language, deployed mistakenly to describe our habitat, could have catastrophic effects on our environment in ways we have yet to see and understand.
The future will in many ways retain the very characteristics of our present, as we transition from the physical toward the virtual world. French architect Auguste Perret once said, “Architecture is what makes a beautiful ruin”. Our spaces and places may soon become obsolete. This mighty city we live in, Babylon, could easily disappear as we know it, leaving behind our built landscape to bear witness of our own hubris.
and then 