Grow, Gotham, grow!

Columbia historian Kenneth T. Jackson supports the plane to rezone East Midtown:

432 Park Avenue is already under construction

FOR much of the last century, New York City has been the financial, cultural, media, retailing and fashion capital of not just the country but the world. Yet the great Hudson River metropolis is in danger of losing that status because of a growing local attitude that favors the old over the new, stability over growth, the status quo over change and short buildings over tall ones. 

That attitude can be seen most clearly in the groundswell of opposition to a proposal by the Department of City Planning to rezone 73 blocks on the East Side of Manhattan to allow for newer and bigger skyscrapers. ...

Is New York still the wonder city, the place that celebrates the future, the city that once defined modernism? Or should it follow the paths of Boston, Philadelphia, Charleston and Savannah in emphasizing its human scale, its gracious streets and its fine, historic houses? 

The answer for a metropolis competing on a global scale must be no, because a vital city is a growing city, and a growing city is a changing city. When Henry James returned to New York in 1904 after a long absence in Europe, he discovered that the city of his youth had “vanished from the earth.” But in its place a powerful new metropolis was emerging, with a skyline unequaled at the time. 

That was the nature of New York then, and it remains so today. Those who oppose changes like the East Midtown plan may love New York, but they don’t understand that they are compromising its future as the world’s greatest city.

What the designers at Curbed think a rezoned East Midtown could look like in 2040