I spent last Friday impatiently locked down in Cambridge as the search went on for the second suspect in the Boston Marathon bombing. The day before, I’d gone to have a look at the University of Massachusetts campus in Dartmouth, a gigantic eerie, dozen-building concoction of grim ribbed-concrete hubris designed by Paul Rudolph in the 1960s. I had been won over by Rudolph’s government center in Goshen, N.Y., a startlingly intricate composition, also in his characteristic Brutalist style, that … [Read more...]
Folk Art Demo: Cultural Vandalism
It’s sad to at least hear the seemingly inevitable news that the Museum of Modern Art will demolish the Museum of American Folk Art, opened only 12 years ago and closed in 2011. Some critics blame the hubristic architecture of the $32 million building for bringing the museum to its financial knees. The acrobatic shaping of space by the architects Tod Williams and Billie Tsien, and its self-consciously artisanal use of glass, metal, and concrete, wasn’t kind to objects conceived in places and by … [Read more...]
To Fix Penn, Let MSG Live — For Now
Can there still be hope for the 25-year-old dream of remaking Penn Station from a grim maze to smoothly operating city gateway? The Municipal Art Society think so, and kudos to them for turning up the heat to get it done. The deux ex machina this time is the expired operating permit for the dreadful Madison Square Garden, which would seem a major roadblock to overhauling the station. The Dolan family, which owns the Garden, seeks to have the permit extended in perpetuity. Advocates would like … [Read more...]
Let Biloxi’s “Mad Potter” Museum Live
Word comes via the New York Times that the Ohr-O’Keefe Museum in Biloxi, Miss., is struggling. It displays the impish, gorgeous ceramic work of the “Mad Potter of Biloxi,” George Ohr. Frank Gehry has made a fairy-tale assemblage that nicely echoes Ohr’s work and takes full advantage of a swoonable site full of live oaks facing the Gulf of Mexico. This museum has been a labor of love for some very committed locals, and is a bracing emblem of pride for a Mississippi coast that still looks beat-up … [Read more...]
Tax cut absolutists strike at nation’s lifeblood
A throwaway comment in the July 25 broadcast of NPR’s “On Point” stopped me in my tracks. (If you don’t listen to Tom Ashbrook motoring incisively at speed through incredibly sticky issues, you’re missing some of the best public-affairs programming on air.) In a program on the debt debate, Daniel Mitchell, ostensibly an expert on tax policy at the Cato Institute made reference to “people in the productive sector of the economy” -- meaning the private sector. This kind of reference is common … [Read more...]
Two Unmentionable Words
I was in Salt Lake City some time ago and was advised sotto voce that it would be unwise to voice a certain term. In Kansas it’s just not done either, a local explained. Bruce Katz, who heads the Metropolitan Policy Program at the Brookings Institute no less, suggested less offensive words. These unutterable words? Climate change. In large swaths of the country, bullying by climate-change skeptics has made these words unsuitable for use in civil discourse. “They just start arguments,” … [Read more...]
Stop the Debt Limit Madness
I would not usually comment on the alleged deficit debate -- built around a ginned-up debt-limit-raising “crisis.” But it has move to a new level of fantastical unreality as it allegedly reach its endgame. The conservative radicals in Congress want tax breaks off the table even though many are really juicy targets. Democrats have succumbed to the fallacy that hacking debt now is more essential than creating an economy that generates jobs and wealth. The radicals argue that huge chunks of what … [Read more...]
Book, The Agile City, arrives in May!
I did not expect my book to be so grimly well-timed. The nuclear tragedy in Japan may do permanent damage to nuclear as a “clean” energy source for the future. Spiking oil prices are making at least a few of us think about how we can use less energy. The Agile City makes a case for conservation—through the design of buildings, communities, and transportation. It shows that reducing energy use can put climate-change goals within our grasp quickly and affordably. Urban agility doesn’t … [Read more...]
Why Ban the Beltways
Houston’s third outer beltway would bisect the precious Katy Prairie, but at least it’s advocates are honest about its purpose according to this Streetsblog post: to aid development not mobility. There’s plenty of unmet transportation demand around Houston but it is outer-outer suburban developers who get state road dollars to pave access to their doors -- before they’ve even built. It’s the most egregious example of why I call for banning beltways in my new book The Agile City (above, Las … [Read more...]
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