“The current epidemic of out-of-context as-of-right development is many years in the making,” says Tara Kelly, Vice President of Policy and Programs at The Municipal Art Society of New York, an advocacy group that focuses on the public realm. So are these buildings just the inevitable result of America’s hyper-capitalist society, the obvious outcome of trying to squeeze as much ‘value’ from every new development? That’s part of it, but it’s also down to improvements in technology, which allow such feats of engineering to be built, partly it’s down to developers wanting to make as much money as possible, and partly it’s down to the fact that developers can transfer ‘air rights’ from adjacent buildings and build higher than ever before. Many of these profane spires have been built with tax abatements from our once public-oriented city government.” Not only do they deny public access to the top and cast long shadows on the street, they will seldom be occupied, as their $90 million apartments are financial instruments, not really apartments for everyday life. No such public space will be offered by our present privatised spires. “The Empire State Building’s vertical dominance offered a public observatory deck. The renowned New York architect Steven Holl said: “If we rewind to Manhattan in 1934 and buildings like the Rockefeller Center, thin and vertical architecture marked great public urban space,” he told Dezeen. The city’s architecture critics, never shy in voicing their opinions, have not held back. Aside from the morals of such naked capitalism, the aesthetics of this recent push upward have also been called into question. These are towers for the ultra-wealthy glossy structures filled with luxurious apartments costing anywhere between US$10 and $90 million, places for the global elite to park their assets as much as places to live. Or, witness the rising form of Central Park Tower, which will be the tallest residential building in the world when it’s completed, a vast glass monolith, looming over the southern section of Central Park. It’s ‘slenderness ratio’ is just 1-15 (the ratio of the width of its base to its height), and looks from a certain angle, almost too narrow, as if the inhabitants on the highest floors should fear for their safety. Take one of the first super talls: 432 Park Avenue.ĭescribed by one critic as an “elongated toothpaste box,” it rises more than 1,400 feet into the air, yet has a footprint of only 93 square feet. While New York has always been a city that built upwards and has never been shy about large-scale urban development, this new breed of skyscrapers seems different somehow a by-product of a neo-liberal fantasy where apartments are ‘assets,’ and where air is something to be bought and sold. Stand in Central Park and you can see them: some finished, some not, all of them pencil thin and incredibly tall, casting long, narrow shadows over the park’s southern end. It’s hard, however, to miss the new generation of super tall skyscrapers that are changing New York’s skyline. Cities change all the time, usually slowly and usually imperceptibly.
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