The Superblock Lives. Unfortunately.
From Spotlight on the Region, a publication of the Regional Plan Association
Everyone knows the Superblock is dead.
Jane Jacobs put a stake in its heart 47 years ago, with her convincing analysis that large blocks decrease street life and are less versatile than smaller blocks that provide a finer-grained network of connections.
While her analysis was once a dissident point of view, it is now that of the establishment, at least in academic circles. Today it would be difficult to find a prominent urban designer that would speak in favor of the Superblock. It’s a relic, most urbanists say, a leftover of Modernist urban planning that celebrated separating uses, showcasing the car, and denigrating the old-fashioned street.
So if that’s the case, why is the Superblock very much alive and well here in New York City and around the region when it comes to designing new projects? Let’s look at a few here in New York City, Jacob’s old stomping ground.
One of the most prominent examples is the planned Atlantic Yards project in Brooklyn. The rail yards to be built upon now separate the neighborhoods of Prospect Heights and Fort Greene like a giant moat. But rather than extend some of the smaller streets in Fort Greene across the site and Atlantic Avenue, the current plans actually demaps a major roadway, Pacific Street. This helps create several superblocks, one of them particularly enormous. Connectivity will actually be reduced by the new development.
The Hudson Yards Development on the Far West Side of Manhattan is still evolving and it’s far from clear what exactly will emerge there. But most of the proposed plans submitted by developers for the new area atop the West Side Rail Yards show towers set in parks or plazas. They seem more appropriate to an Edge City outside Dallas than in a dense urban city. Only the Brookfield plan, in its words, “honors the Manhattan street grid” by drawing several new streets across the site, and puts an emphasis on urban style buildings that front on streets.
At the World Trade Center site, designers to their credit have made plans to reinsert Greenwich and Fulton as full streets, and have made pedestrian streets of Cortland and Dey Streets. But the resulting blocks are not comparable to the smaller blocks that once defined the area before the original Trade Center was constructed, nor is it entirely clear what will emerge from the planning and development process once complete.
To be sure, there are physical and engineering obstacles that may make it more difficult to put through streets on some sites, such as the changes in elevation over the Hudson Yards. This is also not to say that all superblocks are bad. Columbia University’s Upper West Side campus on 116th Street is an example of one of the most successful superblocks of all time. It is both enclosed and yet open at the same time. It illustrates how specialized needs sometimes require superblocks. A large urban park like Bryant Park, for example, is a superblock, and we are better off for it.
There have always been some “super blocks” in cities, even prior to the wide spread adoption of the grid system, for things like prisons, military installations or zoos. The problem comes when superblocks start being used for more conventional activities, like office buildings or residential apartments. In short, the superblock should be the exception, not the rule.
Why do working developers haul out the superblock so quickly when designing current projects, despite its near death in academic circles?
One partial answer is all the emphasis in the last few years on protecting against terrorism. Setbacks for more prominent buildings are often larger now, to allow for the placement of bollards and other protective measures. But there is a certain lack of logic here. After all, most New York City buildings do not have enormous setbacks from the street, so pushing that for newer buildings hardly deprives a terrorist of potential targets.
A stronger explanation lies in finance and issues of political power, I’m convinced. Large concentrations of money affect development here disproportionately, and such large concentrations of money often favor having large concentrations of land to work with. While it may be a disservice to the city to have a large, island-like superblock – traffic flow is disrupted, walking and bicycling trips are made more difficult – to the developer, a superblock allows for wide floor plates and campus-like settings that would not otherwise be possible. And since the government sector is weak, large developers often end up doing what suits them first, not the public.
One relatively easy way to promote the creation of fewer new superblocks is to make the promotion of a finer-grained street grid one of the specific criteria by which a project is judged when under development review. I sense this is not now the case.
– Alex Marshall, Editor, Spotlight on the Region