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Five Cheap Oil Myths
Clap your hands for cheap gas. Everyone else is. Allow me to prick the happy oil-price balloon. Prices have declined rather quickly from well over $4 a gallon last summer to—supposedly—$2 somewhere. (I am never where super cheap gas is.) But don’t cheer too hard. The “good” news is hype. Myth 1: Lower oil prices Read more
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Sometimes You Don’t Know Where a Story Will Take You
Occasionally I embark on a project that sends me straight down the rabbit hole. That turned out to be the case with my story just-published in the New York Times, “On Elite Campuses, An Arts Race.” For a “trend” piece, this one is fairly short (not all readers agree…) , but I ended up interviewing Read more
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Kaci Hickox’s Heroism v. 1 World Trade’s Architecture of Fear
I admire the guts of Kaci Hickox, the Maine nurse who put herself at risk to help stop the Ebola scourge in Africa. Her idealism and that of others who do this work is so inspiring at a time when we seem to be surrounded by cynicism and lack of leadership. On her return to Read more
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Model Sugar Hill Project: How Not to Fund “Affordable” Housing
If you asked a reasonably well-informed New Yorker what the chief problem of housing for low income people is, they would probably answer “the poor door.” In projects that mix market-rate apartments with so-called affordable ones, some segregate units serving lower incomes and give them a separate entrance. That entrance no doubt lacks the doorman and Read more
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In 3rd Phase, High Line Park Confronts Crowds, High Buildings
The High Line Park transformed Manhattan’s Meatpacking district in its first two phases. Now as its last stretch wraps the massive Hudson Yards megadevelopment, the city around the High Line is transforming the park. Compare the image above to the current state below: The High Line was the first American park to go viral. The Read more
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When Esthetic Elites Inflict Strange Architecture
I‘m drawn to the broad revulsion by both critics and ordinary people against architecture that’s willful, acrobatic, theatrical—essentially attention-demanding. So I’ve found the diversity of comments on my story running now in Architectural Record (“Obdurate by Design: The Difficult Case of Willful Buildings That Demand Heroic Efforts to Adapt and Preserve”) instructive—running the gamut Read more
James S. Russell 