The City After The Automobile: An Architect's Vision

199 Pages·1998·12.89 MB·English

by  Moshe Safdie

T h e C i t y
A f t e r t h e A u t o m o b i l e
ALSO BY MOSm SAFDIE
Beyond Habitat.
For Everyone a Garden
Form and Purpose
The Haward-Jerusalem Studia:
UPban Designs for the Holy City
Beyond Habitat by 20 Years
The Language and Medium of Architecturn
Jerusalem: The Future of the Past
T h e C i t y
A f t e r t h e A u t o m o b i l e
An Architect's Vision
MOSHE SAFD
with Wendy Kohn
Wes~iewP ress
A Meder of the Perseus Books Group
0-8133-3545-0
All ri&ts resmed. Prhted in the United Skta of Amwia. Ha part of this publia&on
may be rqmduced Or tranamiPIed in any form or by any mans, dectronic or me-
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ion in writing from the publisher,
T aa nd ilima~omam s&t @ 1997 by Moshe Saf&e
W m qW iG orba (1873-39%), La ViIiefufum. We selatbm bar& du p d kde la cimh-
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Contents
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.................................
Acknowledgments v11
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Prologue k
PART I: VISIONS OF THE CITY
.......................
CHAPTER 1 The Ailing City 3
....................
CHAPTER 2 The Evolving City 11
..................
CHAPTER 3 The End of the Gtfr 27
PART IT: FACING mALIm
...........
CHAPTER 4 The Making of Public Space 39
..................
CHAPTER 5 Working in the City 55
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CHAPTER 6 Living in the City 69
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CHAPTER 7 Confronting Mega-Scale '85
PART 111: TOWARD THE FUTURE:
.................
CHAPTER 8 Planning the Region 103
.................
CHAPTER 9 Traveling the Region 123
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CHAPTER 10 The Utility Car 137
........
CHAPTER .I 1 The City After the Automobile 151
.................................
Epilogue:Urbana 169
.......................................
End Notes 175
...........................................
Index 181
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This book has been enriched by the advice and criticism ogered
by several friends and colleagues. In particular, I want to thank
Nat Glazer, Joseph Koerner, Marty Peretz, Peter G. Rowe,
Witold Rybczynski, Michael Sorkin, and Leon Wieseltier, who
read the manuscript and made invaluable suggestions. My
thanks also to Jack Stoddart, Angel Guerra, and Lynne Missen,
our editor, all at Stoddirt Publishing, for their encouragement
and support; to everyone at Basic Books; to Linda Kahn; and to
Elsa Franklin, whose belief in the book led to its joint publi-
cation in the United States and Canada.
Wendy Kohn began working with me on this book in 1993
as a researcher and editor. As time went by, it became apparent
that her contribution extended well beyond that of editor. I am
particularly grateful for her insistence that no urban propos-
als relevant to North America can overlook the power of the
American dream of dispersal and openness, and that con-
temporary concepts must therefore reconcile the forces of
concentration and dispersal.
Mosw~S AFDIE
RIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
MARCH1 997
vii
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In 1959, as a graduating student from McGill architecture
school in Montreal, I set out on a study trip sponsored by the
Canadian Central Mortgage and Housing corporation. Five stu-
dents, one from each of the five architecture schools in the
country, we traveled through the suburbs and downtowns of
American and Canadian cities at the height of the suburban
explosion. Having moved to Montreal from Israel only a few
years earlier, I relished this eight-week voyage as my first true
exposure to the North American pattern of urbanization that
seemed to be leading the way for the rest of the world.
Traveling from the dense Northeast to the Midwest and
West coast, I found myself repeatedly and profoundly impressed
by the force of suburbanization the desire for dispersal out-
--
ward from city after city, and the ubiquitous dream of
individually owning one's house and garden. Yet all five of us
were particularly charmed by our visits to downtown San
Francisco, Georgetown in Washington, DC, and Rittenhouse
Square in Philadelphia. The attached, compact buildings step-
ping up the hius in San Francisco, the brick houses lining the
streets of Georgetown, and the elegant, well-defined urban
square in Philadelphia were all reminders of the vitality of places
where people of diverse backgrounds mingled, of the ideal-
ized image of cities we each carried in our mind's eye. These