There are helpful ways of thinking about the city in terms of time and space using analogy and metaphor: the vortex and the palimpsest. Let’s start with the vortex, and how to think of the city’s development over time. The Vortex New York’s most frenzied periods of development and redevelopment, across hundreds of years of […]
Category Archives: Manhattan Unlocked
The granular detail of New York: indivudual builidngs, blocks and neighborhoods; architectural styles, local history
16
Mar
Mar
This is the last in the relaunch series of posts that lay out in broad strokes the blueprint for building New York City on the Island of Manhattan […]
06
Mar
Mar
Spanish-American philosopher George Santayana said in The Life of Reason (1905), “those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Other writers and politicians have expressed the same sentiment, and likewise framed it in the negative; “those who don’t study history are doomed to repeat it” is what most people say now. It’s […]
12
Feb
Feb
Manhattan’s downtown cluster of skyscrapers rose in the early 20th century, notably in the Art Deco style, while Midtown rose decades later, especially in the Modern style
02
Feb
Feb
The first posts looked at the three overlapping, uptown-moving waves of development that passed between City Hall and Central Park: live, play and work; and how the second wave of shops and theaters (play) are today’s incarnated “city” of Herald and Times Squares, Lincoln Center and Fifth Avenue shopping. Then we looked at how these […]
Fifth Ave, Madison Square, Manhattan Unlocked, Relaunch posts
2. How the “City” Came From Madison Square
19
Jan
Jan
The problem with defining a city isn’t that there aren’t any good definitions for what makes a city, a city; there are many. The question becomes, can any explain what happened on Manhattan? When we say “the city“ moved uptown, does it mean anything more than the fact more buildings were built? A linguistic lifeline […]
14
Jan
Jan
The “city” that moved uptown on the Island of Manhattan is a combination of today’s squares, blocks and districts of: Lincoln Center, Fifth Avenue’s retail shops, Times Square, and Herald Square. While they moved uptown through the island together as part of a single wave of development, they are distinct from each other as upper- and middle-class shopping and theater districts.