{"id":149,"date":"2005-11-29T12:44:28","date_gmt":"2005-11-29T16:44:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/ecclog\/2005\/11\/29\/one-design-does-not-fit-all\/"},"modified":"2005-11-29T12:44:28","modified_gmt":"2005-11-29T16:44:28","slug":"one-design-does-not-fit-all","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ecclog\/2005\/11\/29\/one-design-does-not-fit-all\/","title":{"rendered":"One Design Does Not Fit All"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

I’ve been pondering lately why highrise living suceeds for the rich, but fails for the poor.  This article<\/a> on the architecture of the recent French riots’ settings from Sunday’s NYT Magazine echoes this Keith Aoki piece<\/a>
\n(warning: large .pdf link) from my Local Government law casebook. Aoki examines why urban renewal
\nfailed as old neighborhoods were bulldozed to make way for those awful,
\ncrack-ridden government-subsidized concrete towers:<\/p>\n

[U]rban planners of this period placed
\nmuch of their faith in the supposed deterministic power of the
\ngeometric modern environment.  They appeared to assume, as had Le
\nCorbusier in the 1920s, that the numerous problems of the slums stemmed
\nfrom poor design and that a clean, new, modern environment would
\ninevitably lead to a healthy new social order.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

The Times article points out a second flaw with the Le Corbusier<\/a>
\napproach, it did not allow for economic mobility or flexibility once
\npeople moved through different life stages:<\/p>\n

In the old days, the argument runs, a person with a working-class
\nidentity could live in “working-class housing.” But today people have
\nhousing careers that vary as much as their professional ones. When they
\nare young and not terribly bothered by noise, they might choose small,
\nfunctional places close to cultural attractions and nightlife. They can
\nmove to larger, quieter ones when they have families and then trade
\nspace for comfort when their children leave home. Corbusier-style city
\nplanning shows no evidence of having considered this. If you don’t vary
\nthe housing units in a given neighborhood – if you fill entire quarters
\nof the city with standard-issue monoliths – you condemn upwardly mobile
\npeople to constant movement. The only people who develop any sense of
\nplace are those trapped in the poverty they started in.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

I find it somewhat odd, how these same modern apartment towers (with
\nall the proper fixings) are what some members of upper-middle and upper
\nurban classes seek.  To them, Le Corbusier’s name is synonymous
\nwith a famous chaise<\/a>
\nmeant to furnish such towers, and they pay for the pleasure of living
\nin these complexes.  For instance, Evil K spoke this weekend of
\nhow one of his ex-co-workers complained that the St. Regis Residences<\/a>
\nforced him to take his apartment with a finished interior.  So,
\nonce it’s complete this month, his ex-co-worker has to have everything
\nripped out and re-done.  One of SSRD<\/a>‘s
\nfriends this weekend told me that they wouldn’t even allow him to view
\nthe units without being pre-approved for $1.69 million mortgage
\n(though, I understand the sales staff’s desire to keep out apartment
\ntourists with neither the intentions nor ability to make a
\npurchase).  One explanation, is that with the right details (i.e.
\na Viking kitchen, a view, and a doorman), these towers are vertical
\ngated communities in the city center.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":121,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[186],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-149","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-legalese"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ecclog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ecclog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ecclog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ecclog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/121"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ecclog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=149"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ecclog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ecclog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=149"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ecclog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=149"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ecclog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=149"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}