New York City began by growing horizontally, increasing the borders of the city and adding more and more buildings and streets. But at some point, the geographic limitations caused a sort of architectural evolution, to go upwards. Not a new spectacle of any sorts, but the skyscrapers and the fame the New York City Skyline is a result of alleviating the stress of an increasing population in the same area of land. This relates to what we discussed in class regarding resiliency and sustainability; continued stress will decrease resilience, with each consecutive stress having a harsher impact.
I wanted to look at what others had proposed as their projects and it seemed like there was a recurring theme, congestion, environmental stresses and its effect on the city’s resiliency. I wanted to combat NYC congestion for my project, but congestion is complex. It isn’t simply too many cars and people, not enough road space and public transportation. Its based on a fundamental issue of a seemingly infinite increase in population in an already finite set of resources; electricity, gas, water, food, and most importantly, space. Therefore, the only solution is to go up. There’s a thing called skyways, which are bridges between buildings that can alleviate sidewalk congestion and have other positive applications. There are cons as well that I wish to investigate, but I believe these skyways have multiple applications. From surveillance to reduce crime activity in the city, to reducing congestion, I think it would be really interesting to do a close-analysis on how skyways would both positively and negatively impact the city and future architecture. My father is an architect who has talked about how there’s purchaseable ‘air space’, the space above a building roof in cities that actually needs to be purchased if an adjacent building wants to build a much taller building. With this legislation already existing, there can be further monitoring to ensure environmentally-friendly protocols.
