I’ve been pondering lately why highrise living suceeds for the rich, but fails for the poor. This article on the architecture of the recent French riots’ settings from Sunday’s NYT Magazine echoes this Keith Aoki piece
(warning: large .pdf link) from my Local Government law casebook. Aoki examines why urban renewal
failed as old neighborhoods were bulldozed to make way for those awful,
crack-ridden government-subsidized concrete towers:
much of their faith in the supposed deterministic power of the
geometric modern environment. They appeared to assume, as had Le
Corbusier in the 1920s, that the numerous problems of the slums stemmed
from poor design and that a clean, new, modern environment would
inevitably lead to a healthy new social order.
The Times article points out a second flaw with the Le Corbusier
approach, it did not allow for economic mobility or flexibility once
people moved through different life stages:
identity could live in “working-class housing.” But today people have
housing careers that vary as much as their professional ones. When they
are young and not terribly bothered by noise, they might choose small,
functional places close to cultural attractions and nightlife. They can
move to larger, quieter ones when they have families and then trade
space for comfort when their children leave home. Corbusier-style city
planning shows no evidence of having considered this. If you don’t vary
the housing units in a given neighborhood – if you fill entire quarters
of the city with standard-issue monoliths – you condemn upwardly mobile
people to constant movement. The only people who develop any sense of
place are those trapped in the poverty they started in.
I find it somewhat odd, how these same modern apartment towers (with
all the proper fixings) are what some members of upper-middle and upper
urban classes seek. To them, Le Corbusier’s name is synonymous
with a famous chaise
meant to furnish such towers, and they pay for the pleasure of living
in these complexes. For instance, Evil K spoke this weekend of
how one of his ex-co-workers complained that the St. Regis Residences
forced him to take his apartment with a finished interior. So,
once it’s complete this month, his ex-co-worker has to have everything
ripped out and re-done. One of SSRD‘s
friends this weekend told me that they wouldn’t even allow him to view
the units without being pre-approved for $1.69 million mortgage
(though, I understand the sales staff’s desire to keep out apartment
tourists with neither the intentions nor ability to make a
purchase). One explanation, is that with the right details (i.e.
a Viking kitchen, a view, and a doorman), these towers are vertical
gated communities in the city center.
This was a great post, Echan, and I blogged it myself. I like how you brought it around from Paris to San Francisco. Thanks for posting the Aoki piece–it’s tempting to just sit down and try and digest it–but you might want to warn people that it’s a pdf, since it’s so big. And I have to say, I find the pony-skin Chaise amazingly ugly. 🙂