We stayed at a hipsterish hotel in Des Moines, Iowa (The Surety) that had an excellent restaurant (The Mulberry Street Tavern). The hotel lobby had a pool table and the room mini-bar offered condoms. As we drove from the airport in Cedar Rapids to Des Moines (we missed our connections in both directions at Charlotte and had to scramble), we drove passed scores of wind turbines. We were there for Heidi to cover the opera (https://andymanshel.nyc/2022/07/13/review-arias-over-the-fields-at-des-moines-metro-opera/), which I don’t usually independently comment on, but which was excellent. The “Porgy and Bess” was the best of my experience, and the production values of each of the two shows I thought were higher than any of the other summer festivals (Santa Fe, Glimmerglass, Opera Theater of Saint Louis). Despite the conventional wisdom, there is a progressive, sophisticated national culture, which has reached deeply into the medium sized cities of the mid-West. This is a non-trivial change.
As a child in the sixties, I can recall our annual trips by car to French Lick, Indiana for a business conference that my father attended. We stayed in some pretty dismal motels along the way and ate some pretty awful food in local greasy spoons. The food at the fancy resort where the conference was held was of the mid-century modern American sort – a silver colored bucket with ice and raw vegetables on the table when we arrived and well-done roast beef as the signature menu item. We’ve come a long way from that. Food culture is everywhere. Social media spreads trends and fads like lightening. Almost anything can be delivered by UPS and Fed Ex – from bagels and pastrami to esoteric books and high design furniture. You don’t have to drive to the nearest university town to see art house movies – they’re on Netflix and Amazon Prime – or you can subscribe to what seem to be dozens of more specialized services like Sundance and BBC America to get even more exotic fare.
Des Moines is a city of about 200,000, in a metro of about 400,000. It has long been a center of the insurance industry and its largest private sector employers are Wells Fargo and Principal Financial. It has only a half dozen office towers of more than 20 floors, the tallest of which is the Principal HQ at 45 stories. Many of the downtown buildings are high quality art deco/city beautiful buildings of less than 20 storeys. The post war period, as in so many places, was not as architecturally kind to Des Moines as prior decades, but most of those buildings are mid-rise. The downtown streets and sidewalks are wide, and there isn’t much street level retail and there are many, many parking structures. There is a large, active farmers’ market in the downtown on Saturdays. The downtown’s scale feels more human than Kansas City, because there are fewer tall buildings and there are wider streets. There also seem to be more downtown restaurants. But there still isn’t much pedestrian activity (other than the farmers’ market). The main arteries leading into downtown are lined with the usual low to medium income retailers and fast food brands.
Des Moines is the Iowa state capital, with an impressive capital building that unusually has five domes. The capital sits on a hill overlooking the city that has a large collection of public sculpture, the most impressive of which is a civil war monument. In the chaos of today’s political order it is easy to forget Iowa’s important place in American history as a free state, with John Brown having used Iowa as a base for his anti-slavery campaign of 1856-1859. While Barak Obama won Iowa in 2012, Donald Trump took the state by 9% in both 2016 and 2020. Iowa’s current senators are Republicans Charles Grassley and Joni Ernst. Their predecessors were Democrats Tom Harkin and John Culver. Des Moines is 15% Black. The state is 4% Black. It is certainly interesting to contemplate Iowa’s place in the national culture. This is a place with a sophisticated history, including one of the country’s great state universities, particularly known on the coasts for its writing program. Retired, 40-year U.S. Navy veteran and former Rear Admiral Mike Franken is running against the 88-year-old Grassley this year as a Democrat and has turned up on my social media feeds. He seems impressive, and some polls have put him within striking distance. But Grassley is a formidable opponent with a very high profile. If Franken were to get any traction in the wake of the Supreme Court’s hard right turn, that would be a big deal.
The local airport is small, and most of the flights are to midwest hubs, Minneapolis, Chicago and Saint Louis. I also noticed a direct flight on a small airline to New York, and other flights to Phoenix (a Southwest hub) and Charlotte (an American hub). The airports in Cedar Rapids (even smaller) and Omaha are driving distance – providing more options. We found it difficult to get to from New York. I didn’t notice any flights to Los Angeles or San Francisco. But who needs the coasts, really?
I suspect Iowans know how good they have it. The state’s mean family income is about $80,000. I would conjecture that if a Phillips curve (demonstrating income distribution) were drawn for Iowa, it would be pretty flat. Des Moines seems to have adopted a lot of the best of the urban renaissance of the 90’s – with restaurants, a market and quite a few downtown loft conversions. The weather was pretty intensely hot while we were there. But life there seems excellent – with lots of amenities for a small city (this listing caught my eye: https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/10307-Grimes-St-Indianola-IA-50125/87084714_zpid/. $540,000 for 4 acres and a pool). I would go on to speculate that the most important vector moving Iowa’s political needle is Iowans wanting to preserve what they have – and isn’t that the very definition of conservatism.
The first class of Urban Park Rangers, with Mayor Koch and Gordon Davis at the center. In the lower right, with the tie, is my friend, neighbor, collaborator and future Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe.
“New York, New York, New York; Four Decades of Succuss, Excess, and Transformation” Thomas Dyja (Simon & Schuster, 2021)
The great goal of social science is to amass large amounts of data relating to a social phenomenon, and then organize and synthesize that data in order to explain how that phenomenon works – essentially separating the out the signal from the noise. In “New York, New York, New York; Four Decades of Succuss, Excess, and Transformation,” Thomas Dyja sets out for himself that extremely high bar. He pulls together an overwhelming amount of information about the governance and culture of New York City from 1978 to the present and attempts to tease out what actually happened. It is nearly impossible to believe that one author could accumulate and one mind could retain and come to an understanding such an avalanche of facts. In telling this story, he succeeds beyond any reasonable expectation.
I came to New York in 1978 and have lived here continuously ever since. I began working in the public sphere in 1991. So, in a very material sense, this is my (along with a great many other peoples’) story. I was in, or near, the room where some of the stuff he describes happened. I worked with or knew a significant double-digit percentage of the people he talks about. I generally come out where he does in his broadest conclusions, but as is absolutely inevitable in the blizzard of information Dyja has digested, some of the “facts” and figures he cites either are incorrect or can’t be right (There have never been 50,000 people sleeping on the streets of New York. There have been 50,000 people receiving services for the homeless from the City – mostly living in shelters, most of them families – and not the single adult men who most New Yorkers have in mind when they think of the homeless. While he cite’s Kaiser’s The Gay Metropolis, can it be true that 50% of gay baby boomers died of AIDs?). Dyja also accepts as true a number of the basic assumptions that constitute the conventional wisdom regarding public policy in the city over the last forty years, some of which are just aren’t true or are gross over simplifications (gentrification leads to displacement, homelessness is caused by lack of housing). But, certainly, Dyja’s heart is in the right place, and he is willing to call “bullshit” on a good many self-serving and false claims. I certainly can’t argue with his placing our work on the Bryant Park restoration, and the thinkers we relied on like Holly Whyte and George Kelling, at the dead center of his epic.
The book relies on press reports and interviews with high profile players for much of its factual foundation. Unfortunately, the New York press often gets the details of local coverage wrong (and more than occasionally gets the entire story wrong), taking the press releases of public officials at face value – and while newspaper reporting may be the first draft of history, it constitutes an unreliable basis on which to write its later versions when it comes to New York City government. It has also been my experience that folks in public life in New York tend to gild their lilies – they take credit for stuff they didn’t do and they seem to remember that positive results they stumbled into were things they planned. Relying on those sources without questioning them will lead to false positives. But when bringing together so many stories, checking them all out would be a lot to ask.
The book’s great accomplishment is to highlight the policies of the Koch administration that laid the groundwork for New York’s revitalization (particularly in housing and public space) that continues through today, and the cadre of smart, effective professionals that Koch attracted to government the like of which has not been seen since (unfortunately). My personal recollection of third term Ed Koch was of a bullying narcissist. As the New York Times recently reported on at length, Koch remained in the closest during the AIDs crisis and actively worked to cover his personal tracks. Koch also deployed racially inflammatory rhetoric, amping up the city’s most debilitating division. To put it mildly, he consciously failed to attempt to understand, and even dismissed, the concerns of New York City’s large Black community. But, at the end of the day that didn’t drive Koch Administration policy, which, using clever financing mechanisms, built tens of thousands of new affordable housing units (which over decades ultimately became hundreds of thousands), transforming the city’s most neglected, abandoned and disinvested neighborhoods into desirable places. And speaking of places, Parks Commissioner Gordon Davis thought up the idea of private non-profit entities to secure resources for and improve the management of parks – leading to the restoration of Central, Bryant (in which I was directly involved) and Prospect Parks. I am convinced that those two programs, in housing and parks, were the key elements that changed the perception of cities and sparked the return to urban centers across the country – a force so powerful that it has continued through 9/11, the financial turbulence of 2008, hurricane Sandy and the COVID-19 pandemic.
Dyja’s writing about 9/11 is particularly beautiful; capturing the moment perfectly. He avoids the solipsism and self pity that infects so many other attempts to describe that horrific day. It was a primary election day, on which I was working the polls for mayoral candidate Mark Green in the northeast Bronx. I ended up in a four hour walk to the Upper West Side, with a non-functional transit system, limited information and an inability to get through to home on the phone. All along the walk home I had a view of smoke rising from lower Manhattan as I moved south. When I got home and turned on the television, the video of the time between the planes’ flying into the buildings and their collapse was the worst thing I have experienced before or since. Dyja bravely and frankly identifies the forces that made the return to normal at the former World Trade Center site impossible and that have left us with a permanent, disheartening gash in New York’s side (which will never be remedied), and a collection of inhumanely scaled towers.
It was interesting to read of the yin and yang during the Bloomberg Administration of Amanda Burden and Dan Doctoroff, which I didn’t understand at the time, while I was toiling ten miles away from City Hall in the neighborhood development fields of Jamaica, Queens: Burden having worked for William H. (Holly) Whyte, the advocate for small scale urbanism and close observation, and Doctoroff being the purveyor of grand plans (like the failed New York Olympics) and big ideas (like the failed Hudson Yards). The bastard child of this dynamic is the hugely popular tourist attraction of the High Line, which isn’t really a successful public space (because it is mostly a place to walk through, rather than linger in) but has been a powerful engine for real estate development along its flanks, and a model for similar projects across the country.
There is a lot in the book about the commercial worlds of hip hop and the art market, which may be useful scene setting – but about which I, personally, don’t very much care and think aren’t particularly culturally important. The New York of the late 1970’s and early-to-mid 1980’s may have been one of urban decline, but it was also a uniquely yeasty and important era for high culture here – particularly in music and dance. To me, it would have been much better to use the work of people like Phillip Glass, Steve Reich, Trisha Brown and Twyla Tharp as the cultural yard stick against which to measure changes in the city over the period. The transformation of Carnegie Hall from an overheated place where paint chips fell from the ceiling on to your head during classical concerts to the glamourous outpost of European high culture fostered by Sandy Weill is a story worth telling. The book has no mention of other cultural innovators like Stephanie French. But, Dyja wrote his book, not mine.
On the homelessness front, Dyja only briefly quotes Rosanne Haggerty, my social entrepreneurial heroine, and instead relies on testimony from the crafty, sly fox of the unhoused, Bob Hayes. I would like to know more about the Haggerty’s departure from the path-breaking Common Ground and that organization’s transformation into Breaking Ground, now a central institution in what Haggerty calls the homeless/industrial complex. The current state of services for the homeless in New York is the result of bad data, misinformation and worse public policy, which Dyja doesn’t clearly explain.
Oddly, NY x 3, provides more detail and moves more slowly through the early Koch years and accelerates the narrative pace during DeBlasio Administration. It’s the opposite of how history is usually recounted – with the past receding and the present in the forefront. As a result, the beginning of the book is a rewarding slog, and the end of the book feels rushed and less detailed. There is a great deal about David Rockefeller (Chase) and Walter Wriston (Citi), but nothing about Jamie Dimon (Chase) and Dick Parsons (Citi) (another one of my heroes). That, notwithstanding, Dyja provides the most telling analysis of the eight years of DeBlasio’s mayoralty of which I am aware; which is impressive, given that we’re it is only months behind us. While I was a middling official in City government during DeBlasio’s last four years, I wasn’t sure of what was hitting me. I was a believer in DeBlasio’s attempts to improve the situation of the city’s worst well off, but was mystified by the chaos, lack of direction and just plain bad decision making that seemed to be trickling down from above. Dyja sympathetically explains DeBlasio’s lack of managerial skills, diffidence and indecisiveness.
Typical of the kind of small inaccuracies that creep into daily journalism, I was counsel to all three BIDs. Taken by the Times at a City Council hearing in 1996.
The book made me long for the New York of my youth. Not because the era was more fun or interesting, but because City government during the 80’s effectively implemented policies that made a difference – and the Mayor and Deputy Mayors (like Ken Lipper, Nat Leventhal and John Zuccotti) backing up risked taking innovative managers like Gordon Davis at Parks and Paul Crotty at Housing. What we are now left with is a sclerotic, risk averse local government that is strangled by its outdated, dysfunctional personnel, legal and contracting procedures. What we have inherited is ineffectual public administration by press release. I was privileged to be a part of the private sector effectiveness of New York’s largest business improvement districts, which Dyja also focuses on (although, in a small detail that perhaps only matters to me, he glancingly misses why Rudy Giuliani had Dan Biederman and me fired from Grand Central Partnership). So, I don’t really have much to complain about on that score.
The book’s epigraph is a quote from the wonderful and underappreciated Whyte, whom I also knew and tremendously admired. Whyte was the father or godfather of Bryant Park. Perhaps Dyja’s recognition of Holly, whom he cites through out the book, and Richard Rein’s revelatory recent biography, will give Holly his day. As Deja makes clear, Holly Whyte has given us the tools to create create great urban places. I, for one, will ever be grateful to Dyja for his superhuman research and telling this story with so much elan and passion. I’m assigning New York, New York, New York to my children, who take a safe and vibrant New York City for granted, so that they can get something of a feel for what Dad was doing while they were growing up.
The week after the national election in France we walked from Cahors to Moissac in southeast France along the Way of St. James (the GR 65, Le Chemin de St. Jacques de Compostelle), a distance of about 80 kms (50 miles) over four days. The walk went from the department of the Lot to the department of the Tarn-et-Garonne. Cahors includes a beautifully preserved medieval district, and some very good places to eat. Moissac is famous for its 12th Century cloister with over 70 beautifully carved capitals and an imposing tympanum over the door to the abbey church. In between, we walked through handsome, rolling, agricultural countryside, planted in vines, fruit trees and grain. Along the way are the lovely towns of Montcuq and Lauzerte. The food was uniformly very good (of course). Both the built and natural environments are wonderful. The residential real estate is inexpensive (I would guestimate at around $150 per square foot, from my perusal of the listings in the windows of the real estate agent offices along the way). So, what’s the problem?
I write this, against the background of the ground war in Eastern Europe not 2,000 land miles away. As we walked, the war could have been on another planet. I did have a nagging concern about being vaporized without warning while on the pilgrimage. But it didn’t happen. And the peace of the French countryside was yet another thing about which to be grateful.
We walked from Cahors to Moissac as shown as the bottom half of the route above.
Before leaving for our trip, I followed the French national election in the New York Times. One read of a tremendous public personal dislike for the winner, Emmanuel Macron, a centrist, who leads a political party he founded for the purpose of advancing his career. His opponent in the final round of the election was Marie La Pen, the scion of the nationalist, anti-immigrant party, who he defeated handily, after a great deal of advance media hand ringing. The traditional Socialist and Christian Democratic parties are no longer factors. Perhaps the most powerful political vector in France of recent years was the mouvement des gilets jaunes, the yellow vests – catalyzed by an increase in gas prices four years ago (and, of course, they hadn’t seen anything yet, with even higher fuel prices yet to come as Russian gas gets turned off). The yellow vests had a list of grievances familiar to Americans – rising prices, resistance to perceived cultural changes, particularly thought to be due to immigration, anger at a powerful political and cultural elite seemingly out of touch and disdainful of “ordinary” French citizens, and a sense of declining economic fortunes.
Personally, Macron is a clear winner in the French national meritocratic sweepstakes. He a graduate of elite schools. He worked in international investment banking. His economic/technocratic strength is that he gets what that institutional restraints are on future French economic growth and has tried to reform them – sclerotic labor and pension systems in particular. Changing those expensive, inflexible systems certainly gores the ox of the non-elite, rural French family – in the name of long-run economic dynamism. Most recently he proposed raising the national retirement age to 65 from 62. Quelle horreur!
The one thing we heard from people we talked with in La France Profonde (the French heartland), in the person mostly of hotel, restaurant and business operators (the people with whom a tourist would tend to come into contact) was the difficulty in getting people to work for them. One hotel-restaurant we ate at and stayed in converted to take out only, because of the difficulty the owners found in keeping service and kitchen staff. We were told that employees tended to be cavalier about attendance, wanted to set their own hours and often quit without notice when the spirit moved them.
Moissac, the destination of the walk (population 13,000), struck me as a somewhat gritty little town, with a larger immigrant population than any of the places through which we had previously walked. On a Sunday and Monday of the weekend of May 1 (the French labor day), the town had only one open place to eat. Because of the Abbey and Cloister, it is a major stop on the Way of Saint James, so quite a few walkers come through the town. It didn’t have much charm, although the riverfront and canal du midi are nice features.
This is in contrast with Lauzerte, only 23 km (17 miles) away; a very attractive, highly manicured medieval hilltop village – advertised as one of the fifty most beautiful villages in France (pop. 1,500). There were fancy renovations going on throughout the town. The well-maintained facades were nearly uniformly medieval and renaissance. The retail district lay outside and below the historic district, which was located on the top of a hill. From peering through gates and looking at photos in real estate offices (with English names), the houses seemed to be stylishly decorated and to be either second or retirement homes. Montcuq (pop 1,200), about 13 km (8 miles) from Lauzerte, was another well maintained hilltop village, which we found to be more authentic – with cafes, bakeries and butcher shops actually in the town. It also had a very charming English language bookstore (https://www.livresbooksandcompany.com) and a tall 13th century keep. Both appeared to be great places and superb towns in which to live.
So, what’s the problem? Why so cranky? I would argue that the French have it pretty good! And, it’s important to point out, immigration is essential to the French labor market and economy – because the French have a birthrate of 1.87, against a generally acknowledged replacement rate of 2.1. Part of the it may be the discontent caused by the increasing wage and wealth inequality of the West, amplified by the media ubiquity of the wealthy and their stuff. You see these other people with their private planes and yachts and wonder why they have them and you don’t. This is especially obvious in France, the very home of luxury goods. Two of the highest profile billionaires in France are François-Henri Pinault and Bernard Arnault (the third wealthiest person in the world and the wealthiest in Euope), both of whom are highly visible in French media and derive their wealth from the sale of luxury goods.
Also, contributing the dissatisfaction is sense of loss of traditional French culture, generated by media about both immigration and the growing distance between a perceived, internationalist cultural elite, exemplified by Macron, Pinault and Arnault. But as an American spending time outside of Paris, that perception seems exaggerated. What’s great about provincial France (and I use that term without the intent of any pejorative connotation), is its cultural uniqueness expressed through food, wine, language and the built environment. Walking the GR 65 (part of a system of walking paths through France called Les Grandes Randonnée [the great routes]) gives the pilgrim a deep sense of history, and particularly religion and spirituality. It comes simply from being in the space. The feelings are inchoate, but powerful. I would advise the French not to worry. Their cultural “brand” is secure, unique and important (as well as marketable). An outsider does not perceive its being diluted.
In sum, from a ten-day visit by a tourist, the French seem to have it pretty good, and they should (like our fellow similarly aggrieved Americans) stop whining. This is true particularly in light of what’s going on in Ukraine. Now, no one likes to be called a whiner and being a card-carrying member of the international elite, advice from such as me to the French working class is sure to be unwelcome, to say the least. But we need to figure out the messaging as to how to make the culturally discontented feel more positive about their lot. This is worth a great deal more thought. I suspect it has something to do with asking people how they are doing, right at this moment, as opposed to about abstract problems other people might seem to have, or hypothetical problems off into the future. I’d be interested to ask a member of the yellow vests: “How is your life. How are your food, housing, health care? What do you enjoy on television and the internet? What else do you do in your spare time?”
Two other brief notes. Things also seemed pretty great in Paris. I saw very few empty retail storefronts. The streets were clean. The presence of the clochards (homeless) was minimal, and non-existent in the crowded Metro. Lots of young people are riding bikes and scooters in the protected bike lanes built by the much loathed Mayor Anne Hidalgo (who is said to be more popular in New York than in Paris) all over central Paris. The city was hopping in many places at night, with kids jamming bars and restaurants. I particularly enjoyed seeing a diverse group of a couple of dozen young people who had set up a speaker in a plaza in a commercial area on the right bank to dance (traditional social dancing, at that) very late at night. We ate in a new restaurant run by the famous Bras family in former stock exchange building restored and developed by Pinault. Our visit to the Louvre was marred by the lines and crowds on entering and leaving the building and in the Italian Renaissance galleries (thank you brother Leonardo). Paris generally struck me as clean, safe, vibrant and fun. And, in the past, I have generally not been a fan of the place, preferring the French countryside.
I would be remiss in not highlighting the night we spent in Le Clos de Gamel, in Lascabanes slightly off of the Chemin. We ended up there because we split one of the usual walking days set by our excellent travel agent (https://followthecamino.com/en/), in order to attempt to keep each day’s walking to less than 25km, and they had to find a place between their usual accomodations – particularly challenging as we made our arrangements late in the season. They found Le Clos de Gamel, which is the family farm of David and Christelle Bernadou, to which they have added over the years. It has accommodations in several buildings and features a pool and hot tub – much appreciated after a long day of walking – and not a regular feature of places to stay along The Way. The Bernadous were gracious hosts, served us a wonderful house-made aperitive and red wine (from their vineyard) – along with a delicious dinner. It was quite a find, and is much recommended – even as a destination in itself, for those not traveling on the Chemin.
Gustuvo Dudamel has never done much for me. I’m actually more a fan of his avatar played by Gael García Bernal in the TV series “Mozart in the Jungle” (which, admittedly takes place in NYC). I’ve also long thought that the Los Angeles Philharmonic is at best a second rate band, which is remarkable because it’s recent conductors have included top shelfers Simon Rattle and Esa-Pekka Salonen (not to mention the storied Carlo Maria Guilini in the more distant past) and its managers have been industry legends Ernest Fleischman and Deborah Borda. Why are those people so well-recognized when the orchestra has never been better than pedestrian?
We were in LA for Du Yun’s “Our Daughter’s Eyes” presented at REDCAT by Beth Morrison Projects and the LA Opera. We also took in Fidelio at the Philharmonic while we were there. I will tread lightly about the LA Phil, as the house professional critic has written about both for the Wall Street Journal. It was also interesting to be in Disney Hall after recently experiencing its acoustic doppelganger in Kansas City. While we were settling in to seats about three quarters of the way back in the hall, the bassoonist was warming up on stage and sounded like he was sitting in our laps. But once the performance started it seemed really far away. Not that the orchestra offers much to hear. The strings of the LA Phil can be accurately described as scrappy for a supposedly world class band, and the ensemble was almost disorganized. Maybe because of Gustavo’s jetting around (he’s also the cappo di cappo at the Paris Opera) rehearsal time may have at a premium for a complicated production, but that seems unlikely given the show’s high profile.
This photo of Maestro Dudamel appears several stories high on the facade of Disney Hall.
The New York critical fraternity spent a good deal of time this spring panting for Dudamel to replace the unsuccessful Jaap van Zweden at the New York Philharmonic after van Sweden’s contract comes to an ignominious close next year. Dudamel spent two weeks with the NY orchestra in March playing Schumann, and the New York press went into a frenzy. OK, the guy has terrific hair, a gleaming smile and an interesting life story. But, to these ears, he just isn’t that interesting a musician. In any event, my money is on the exciting Finn, Susanna Mälkki taking the reins at the NYP (you read it here first).
The show’s raison d’être was the involvement of deaf actors doubling the singers and the involvement of a signing chorus from Dudamel’s home of Venezuela. The musical aspects of the evening were disappointing from top to bottom, except for the fine performance of Ryan Speedo Green, who this year has become the Met’s reliable all round utility bass. Dudamel pushed the band to break-neck speed, at which they were incapable of playing beautifully. Once upon a time, the LA Phil was known as an outstanding group of LA studio musicians, moonlighting as classical players. Now, as a full-time orchestra with a 52 week contract, they aren’t even that. I’d rather watch reruns of MITJ.
I would be remiss not to crab about how Disney Hall doesn’t relate to the street and is anti-urban. I will also please my readers by avoiding the opportunity to once again crab about Pershing Square which continues to suck.
But here is the headline – Downtown LA has become almost walkable over the course of the pandemic. Across the street from the loathed (by me) Disney Hall, Gehry has designed a nearly completed massive mixed-use development (1.2 million sq ft, 500 apartments, 20% affordable) that DOES relate well to the street and is massed in a fascinating manner that breaks up its bulk. The building is broken up into two towers of offsetting rectangular forms that humanize it’s scale. It’s mixed uses, including a good deal of street level retail, should seriously animate that stretch of Grand. A hearty bravo to Mr. Greenburg and his patrons at Related. There is lots of other residential development activity that has been recently completed within walking distance.
I chose not to rent a car for the first time in a trip to La La Land. We took Ubers from Manhattan Beach to Downtown, as well as round trip to The Getty Center from our downtown hotel. All three trips were shit shows. I just can’t understand how Angelenos can put up with it. The trip back from Malibu to DTLA was almost two hours. The Getty Center is magnificent – and its public spaces are uplifting (which is surprising given the extensive use of hardscape. Water features and movable chairs and table soften the experience. The special exhibit of Poussin we visited was lavishly presented. While it goes without saying, it is good to have unlimited money.). But how am I ever going to go there again unless I sleep over or take a helicopter.
The rest of the visit we walked around downtown. We breakfasted at Grand Central Market and walked along Broadway in historic DTLA. Broadway has made only some progress since the onset of the pandemic. It’s still more than a little rough around the edges. Yes, there is considerable loft conversion, and lots of interesting architecture. The many former movie palaces convey a sense of what tinsel town once was. However, there are still many, many empty, or underutilized, poorly maintained architecturally significant structures. The potential is tremendous.
By contrast, the Arts District near downtown appears to be a happening place (who knew that LA had an arts district?). The neighborhood is small, and the amount of adaptive reuse is patchy, but apartments are being developed there and there are some cool other uses. We had an excellent meal at a rooftop restaurant, with a rather obscurely marked door at street level. The place (La Cha Cha Cha) was large, entirely outdoors, comfortable and landscaped with cacti. Next door was a club ominously named Death & Co. that we were assured was super cool and had great drinks. The neighborhood was walking distance from downtown.
I should note that, yes, downtown Los Angeles has a noticeable homeless population, like many other American cities. There are interesting signs around downtown designating special enforcement zones, prohibiting camping and sleeping on the sidewalk. I can’t say the issue appears to be worse than other big U.S. cities or that we ever felt overwhelmed or unsafe. I suppose this has become something of the new urban normal. But by no means did we feel that DTLA was apocalyptic or a set for a new installment of Bladerunner (as I have argued elsewhere, this is a problem that is not principally about housing and is solvable if the political will and data driven social services can be mustered).
A view down Grand Avenue. The Broad is on the left.
Downtown is brimming with newly built and converted residential developments. The streets still aren’t very active, but the plazas at 1 and 2 Cal have water features, retail, movable chairs and tables and lots of potential. Grand Avenue now has an attractive string of cultural institutions (including Disney Hall, the newish Broad Museum, the Museum of Contemporary Art and the expanding Colburn School facilities), even if nobody appears to much walk between them. You can have a pleasant walk from the towers of Bunker Hill through the Civic Center, El Pueblo de Los Angeles, Little Tokyo through China Town. On my first trip to LA in about 1976, Olvera Street in the Pueblo was regarded as a tourist trap. Today it is rather charming. We had lunch at El Paseo (which has been there for decades) and the other diners were wearing Dodger regalia and appeared not to be tourists but locals pre-gaming (it was opening day, albeit not for five hours).
A note to Christopher Hawthorne, LA’s Chief Design Officer (and the Time’s former architecture critic): how about paying some attention to the landscaping in the area around City Hall? There are decrepit planters and garden beds among the brutalist 60’s municipal buildings. The plazas are strewn with trash and poorly maintained. I’m sure the Mayor, being a serious Angeleno, never gets out of his car when going between municipal structures, but if LA is serious about design, it really ought to start with its front yard.
Notwithstanding the foregoing, as we lawyers say, DTLA is actually getting to be walkable. Who have thunk it. Joel Kotkin must be shocked. Between the cultural institutions, the street level retail, the varied neighborhood offerings and the improved landscaping, someone might actually live downtown and rarely need access to their car (which, under the circumstances, would be advantageous). Grand Avenue is a happening place. And you can go hear Gustavo Dudamel conduct the LA Philharmonic as often as you want – which is fine with me.
Musical Group on a Balcony. Gerritt van Honthorst. 1622. The Getty Center. A theorbo and two lutes.
After parking my car at the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts and leaving the elevator from the garage to go to Helzberg Hall to hear the Kansas City Symphony, I noticed something that I found odd. The outdoor temperature was in the mid 40’s and yet none of the men going to the concert were wearing overcoats. How could that be? It was cold. I was wearing a coat, a hat, a scarf and gloves. At intermission it dawned on me – people went from the garages in their homes in the suburbs, into their cars, to the garage at the Kauffman Center and up into the concert hall via escalator. Why would they need a coat? They never went outside to get from home to the concert. It was all very comfortably and conveniently arranged. This, in nutshell was my experience in Kansas City, Missouri.
An entrance to an office building parking garage. Note the roll down gate, which rolls up when you put your ticket in the gate.
Kansas City defied my expectations of what successful cities are supposed to be all about. The city seems to work for most of its citizens. The downtown, while dense, has no street life. The downtown’s public spaces were deserted when I visited. There is hardly any street level retail downtown. And yet, the city, the largest in the state, has consistently grown over the years to a population of 500,000, its highest ever; in a metro of about 2.3 million. It is the country’s 31st largest city andits 26th largest metro. It has a symphony, an opera company, a ballet, a notably well funded public library and an important art museum (the Nelson-Atkins). Unlike most other successful cities, it does not have an important university or medical center. Notwithstanding its representation in the U.S. Senate by the loathsome anti-government, Joshua Hawley, its largest employer is the Federal Government. It’s the home of Hallmark, Commerce Bank, and T-Mobile is a major employer.
It isn’t the way an Upper West Sider would choose to live, but it appears to be very pleasant. Certainly, it is tough to make an argument that waiting for a subway, crowding into a train car and being hustled for money by someone on every ride from my apartment to Lincoln Center is a superior way of life. What’s wrong with living comfortably, prosperously and conveniently? (The Helzberg family, after whom the hall is named, by the way, sold their regional jewelry store chain twenty years ago to Berkshire Hathaway in an all stock transaction. That tells you what you need to know about the hall’s name. Mr. and Mrs. Helzberg were at the concert I attended, and I am pleased to report that they are hale and hardy.)
A typical Country Club Plaza block.
Before my first visit, I knew very little about the city. What I did know was that it is the home of Country Club Plaza, built by the legendary J.C. Nichols and considered to be, perhaps, the most visionary real estate development project in American history. Country Club Plaza is an open air shopping mall, allegedly designed in the Moorish Revival style covering 55 acres and completed in 1923. Country Club Plaza is whimsical in design and high end in its retail offerings. While it is sort of walkable, it has copious free structured parking, wide streets (more like boulevards) and narrow sidewalks. It is echt Kansas City – in that it is a shopping experience not in the downtown, designed to be driven to. The architecture and landscaping (with many fountains) is however completely entertaining. Unfortunately, COVID has had a seriously deleterious impact on its retail leasing. It appeared to me about 15% of the storefronts were vacant. I was told that the stores that closed were the international high end brands. The stores that remain are familiar national high middle market chains.
Downtown Kansas City has dozens of blocks of office towers, ranging from art deco to glass and steel. There are block after block of high rise buildings, with little to no street level retail. It was not clear to me where office workers grab lunch. Whatever single story or less than, say, ten story structures ever existed in downtown were demolished long ago. The most high end suburbs are about a half hour drive from downtown. It appears that the city’s commercial center was designed to be driven to. You park in a garage, most conveniently in the office building in which you work, you spend your day toiling in that building, and you drive home at the end of the day.
From 2007 to 2017, downtown residential population in Kansas City quadrupled and continues to grow. The area has grown from almost 4,000 residents in the early 2000s to nearly 30,000 as of 2017. A significant number of office towers of all vintages are empty (including, unlike in most other cities, some post war buildings) and are being converted to residential lofts. There is strong demand for downtown living – even without much street life, downtown restaurants or shopping. The appeal must be large, light spaces with views, and not having to worry about shoveling the snow or fixing the roof.
Main Street, which traverses the downtown, has a futuristic looking streetcar, which I didn’t see many people riding. Main Street had almost no pedestrian activity on the early spring day of my trip. I visited two large downtown public spaces, one in the civic center and the other across the street from the convention center. Both were unprogrammed and entirely devoid of people. The civic center lawn featured rows of movable chairs (perhaps for an event). It is the only occasion on which I have been in a space with movable chairs with no one sitting in them. The convention center space was entirely comprised of concrete surfaces, with some very stern signs about behavior at the entrances. It was March. It was cold. But still, no people? Not one?
The Kansas City Convention Center
Same deal with other urban functions. The city has a humongous convention center, a number of downtown theaters, as well as the ten year old, Moshe Safdie designed, Kauffman Center. All of these amenities were designed to be driven to. At the Kauffman Center, I couldn’t find a major entrance to the street. Everyone appeared to enter and exit though the garage. The lobby faces a more than triple height wall of windows with an expansive view south (not of the downtown). When you look immediately down out of those windows, you see a line of parked, high end vehicles. There is no relationship between the Center and the street, and Kansas City residents seem to like it that way.
The Kansas City Symphony pays its players for 42 weeks of service and has a budget of almost $20 million. It is in solid financial shape, with a substantial endowment, and generous annual giving (about 40% of total revenue). It plays fourteen pairs of classical concerts a year, with the balance of its season made up of pops concerts and pit band duty for the ballet and opera. Its music director for 18 years has been the avuncular Harvard and Curtis educated Michael Stern, son of legendary violinist and man of the world (and Upper West Side resident), Isaac Stern. The orchestra plays in a 1,600 seat hall with “vineyard seating,” much like Disney Hall in Los Angeles, and, indeed, shared Disney’s acoustician. The stage juts out into the auditorium, and the seats are steeply raked – from the front of the stage to the back of the hall is apparently less than 100 feet. The audience member certainly feels like he or she is in on the action. The sound of the orchestra in the space is forward and bright – not necessarily ideal for this group of talented and rambunctious young players. The program I heard included This Midnight Hour by British composer Anna Clyne as well as two crowd pleasers, Debussy’s La Mer and the Brahms Violin Concerto, with Midori as soloist.
Music director Stern projects the affect of a regular guy. To my effete eye, his jacket and trousers didn’t match, and the jacket most obviously didn’t fit properly. Some (many) might find that endearing. He also wore a yellow tie and started the concert with a few appropriate words and the Ukrainian national Anthem. The Clyne piece was an atmospheric curtain raiser based on two poems, by Juan Ramón Jiménez and Charles Baudelaire, which were printed in the program. The most effective moment of the work featured two mournful antiphonal trumpets on either side of the stage. Stern conducted the Debussy from an obviously well-used study score, with yellowed-brittle pages, some of them ragged. This is one of the most difficult pieces in the orchestral repertoire to get right. There are temptations galore for the brass (particularly trombone and tuba) to go for the gold, which are best avoided. The piece depicts the restless churning of ocean water and the constant rhythm of surf, with an overlay of a broad range of orchestral colors. It demands restraint and subtlety, as I heard last fall in San Francisco under Esa-Pekka Salonen. The KCS caught the bright colors and pounding rhythms (but, as Richard Strauss once said, “Schauen Sie sich niemals die Posaunen an, es ermutigt sie nur”).
I haven’t heard Midori play in decades. She has long been one of the most popular and acclaimed artists in the classical music world, and while there were surprisingly quite a few empty seats in Helzberg Hall (given the soloist’s popularity and celebrity), Midori delivered. This is one of the two or three most played violin concertos, and Midori must have been called on to perform it in public hundreds of times during her career – but her performance was fresh, committed and perfectly beautiful – in the best sense. The more classical sized orchestra (read: no trombones) provided a supportive accompaniment. The concert was enjoyable experience.
The orchestra must be something of a way station for orchestral musicians on the way up, as a number of the principal chairs were open, and most of its members appeared to be early in their careers. The concertmistress was a visitor from Dallas, trying out for the position. That the country’s 31st largest city sports an orchestra of this quality, speaks (generally unspoken) volumes about classical music and culture in this country. I would guess that the Staatskapelle Halle (founded in 1852) in Halle, Germany (it’s 31st largest largest city), doesn’t play nearly at this level.
There was one black player in the orchestra, and I only noticed one black attendee at the concert. The city is 30 percent black and 10 percent Hispanic. I had a very nice chat with the black woman who runs the city’s visitor’s center, who was upbeat about issues of diversity in the metro. I was, therefore, unable to get a sense of the reality of life for people of color and lower income folks in Kansas City, so my observations are presented with that caveat.
The place where I tried Kansas City BBQ in Country Club Plaza (which was recommended to me by the staff at the terrific nearby Raphael Hotel) wasn’t quite up to the standard of the BBQ at St. Louis’ Pappy’s. I found the pork and beef tips dry (I did think the potato salad was outstanding). But Pappy’s, in my book, is the ne plus ultra of BBQ.
I drew from my trip a broad lesson about the divisions in our national politics. [Missouri is a red state, while Kansas City, like St. Louis, is something of a blue stronghold within that conservative culture. Interestingly, the folks who live on the Kansas side of the state border within the metro, I was told, tend to be even more liberal and Democratic than the rest of the area. That border isn’t one of the two large rivers (Missouri and Kansas Rivers) that runs through the region. I couldn’t figure out where it was.]. Many Americans like to drive. They like houses with yards. They prefer a short commute. They like to shop and eat at national chains (most Americans don’t remember what a crap shoot eating on the road was before the standardization of chains. I remember some pretty terrible food when traveling as a kid. Howard Johnson’s was a reliable oasis.), and to have convenient parking for their shopping (as for their working). It is unsurprising if they feel judged and treated disrespectfully by those of us on the coasts (all three of them), who think cities should be walkable, people should ride bikes and take transit, and that restaurants should be local and vegan. [And alienating, grandiose, high volume lectures about the imminent threat of climate change caused by a car-based life style don’t win any friends or influence any people, no matter how urgent and important the issue may be.] Kansas City works – and while it doesn’t feature most of my personal touchstones for a successful downtown – it would be outrageous for me to be judgmental or make recommendations for improvement based on my experiences, since many people there obviously enjoy how they have chosen to live and the city’s economy seems to be prospering. We coastal elites need to get with the program on that or we are going to be seeing a lot more of Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley, whose political success is drawn from channeling such resentment. And, next time I go to hear the KCS in March, I’m going to leave my coat in my hotel room.
It is a surprising thought, but the past has actually been very good to Pittsburgh, leaving it with both an excellent architectural and institutional infrastructure. The downtown, at the juncture of, and surrounded by, the Monongahela and Allegheny Rivers, is crammed with great examples of early skyscrapers, art deco office buildings and even distinctive 1980’s glass and steel towers. On a recent very cold mid-winter weekday afternoon there was a fair amount of pedestrian activity in the downtown – and a few dozen hearty skaters taking advantage of the rink in PPG Place (Johnson/Burgee, 1984). Pittsburgh, with a current population of about 300,000, has the amenities of a much larger city, with two large universities and the center of a huge regional health care system (metro population of 2,400,000, 20th in size in the U.S.). At its maximum, the city’s population was almost 700,000, the 12th largest in the US. Today it is the 66th largest). The legacies of the Frick, Heinz, Mellon and Carnegie fortunes, in terms of both private philanthropy and cultural institutions are evident. The Carnegie Art and Natural History Museum has important collections, and the Symphony is one of the country’s historic important orchestras (although never considered one of the “Big Five”).
One of the things that appears to make Pittsburgh’s success as a city is a relatively unified and enlightened civic leadership. Of course, a “power elite” can be an opaque and anti-democratic force, exclusive of historically disempowered communities. Pittsburgh’s population is over 20% African American, and its black community has been legendary for creating its own independent culture – importantly chronicled by one of America’s most gifted playwrights August Wilson. The Pittsburgh Courier was a Black newspaper of national significance, publishing from 1907 – 1966. That progressive elite leadership continues in the form of the The Pittsburgh Cultural Trust, which, among other things, is a major Downtown property owner. I note with pleasure that Don Carter, a Pittsburgh architect and urban planner, sits on the Trust’s board. Don is one of the most thoughtful and articulate people I know in the field. He is a tremendous resource for the city. Also to be noted, is that Richard Florida was a member of the community when he taught at Carnegie Mellon for eighteen years.
Walking around the downtown, even in subfreezing weather, is a pleasure – with its great store of architectural gems, quite a few of which have been, or are the process of being converted into residential structures. One loft conversion advertises in its windows that units are available in the “800s.” By any measure the downtown seems to be a success – even without major shopping offerings (the 1.2 million square foot former Kauffman’s department store closed in 2015 and looks to be largely empty). Downtown Pittsburgh has a “gap-toothed” quality and lacks a critical mass of street level activity. This is something that the Trust might focus on among its holdings on Penn Avenue, including a major undeveloped parcel at 8th, now used for parking.
By contrast, The Strip District, north of downtown, does have that critical mass of activity that has developed organically. At 10 PM on a Saturday night with temperatures in the teens, local bars were jammed, and parking lots were full. The Strip was historically the wholesale food market for the region. It continues to have a diverse array of food offerings, many of them of ethnic character. Former commercial buildings have been adaptively reused for both commercial and residential purposes. We had lunch in a second floor food court that included both beer and wine bars with wide selections. Residential developments were scattered among more commercial uses, with a feel something like Long Island City, without any high rise development. A good deal of the land is devoted to parking lots and garages. Even so, Penn and Liberty Avenue feel like they prioritize pedestrians. Downtown needs exactly more of that feel.
The cultural district to the south of The Strip has its own presence and potential – while not yet quite as active at street level. The Pittsburgh symphony plays in a former movie and vaudeville house in the cultural district, part of the downtown. The Heinz concert hall is surrounded by places to eat and drink. It seats about 2,700, with a very large mezzanine, feels huge and has a neutral acoustic. The performance I attended was about two thirds sold to a very engaged and enthusiastic audience, including a great many young people (although the only person of color I noticed was an orchestral flute player). Unfortunately, the orchestra’s press staff chose to seat me in the fifth row on the side, which was far to close to the orchestra given the size of the hall and the program for an optimal sonic experience. The ensemble is led by Austrian maestro Manfed Honeck, whose recordings with the PSO have been widely praised in the press.
The program began with a chestnut, The William Tell Overture (for those of a certain age, the source of the theme from The Lone Ranger) by Rossini and concluded with the Strauss showpiece, Ein Heldenleben. While the Tell Overture was once a pops staple, the opera itself is something of rarity, because despite some wonderful music and a dramatic story, it feels endless. The high ranging tenor part is also difficult to cast. In between, the Orchestra presented the world premier of a Concerto for two bassoons and two clarinets, by composer, Juilliard dean and Serkin family scion, David Ludwig. The lively, shortish concerto was a virtuosic showpiece for members of the of the orchestra and could become a popular curtain raiser for orchestras with players with the chops for the solo parts. The concerto is made up of eight short movements named for renaissance dances (familiar to lutenists. The balances between the more penetrating sound of the clarinets and the muted bassoons, were difficult to maintain, but the piece was skillfully composed for both soloists and orchestra and was clever and entirely entertaining. In remarks before the performance Ludwig noted that he had tried to write a joyful piece. He succeeded. Joy is right now at a premium and is certainly much appreciated. I also heard a new work by the Pittsburgh Opera, while I was in town, but that is not my department (Heidi’s review can be found here: https://wordpress.com/posts/andymanshel.nyc, The performance was at the Bitz Opera Factory, an adaptive reuse of a commercial structure in The Str. It is significant and worth noting that two local musical organizations presented the debut of new works in the same weekend (both by New York City based composers).
The Orchestra is the equal of any major American ensemble. All of the sections were equally strong, with no apparent weak links. Honeck left the setting of tempi and balances to rehearsals and focused his performance efforts on phrasing and articulation, which were clean and superlative. The Rossini was appropriately very fast in the prestissimo, beginning with a beautifully played cello solo, by associate principal David Premo (marked Andante). The required rush of blood was induced by the performance.
There is also a rather Alpine feel to Strauss’ Op. 40, which has one of my favorite Strauss themes in the horns (at marking 74 in the score), beautifully played by the Pittsburgh brass. Also extraordinarily beautifully played were the violin solos by guest concertmaster, soloist and chamber player, Daniel Chong (the concertmaster position in Pittsburgh is open). The orchestra’s of performance of Ein Heldenleben was balanced, controlled and splendidly executed. It’s extraordinary that America has two great orchestras based within 130 miles of each other (the other being Cleveland), a legacy of the region’s mighty industrial past.
Pittsburgh has skillfully transformed itself from a metropolitan area of dying, environmentally degrading heavy industries (glass, coke, steel) to one of the country’s most livable metros. The legacy of those industrial giants has been leveraged to sustain major social and cultural institutions. The transition has been a great success. The city is now known for advanced manufacturing, healthcare, energy, financial and business services, and information technology. Legacy companies maintaining a presence in Pittsburgh include U.S. Steel, Alcoa, PPG, H.J. Heinz and BNY/Mellon.
The city needs to bring a little of the density of activity of the Strip District to the downtown. Market square is a fine example. It is adjacent to PPG Place but doesn’t relate to it well. On a cold winter day, while the skaters animated PPG Place; Market Square, with a number of active restaurants facing it, seemed deserted. There is a market and a night market in the square from May through October. Perhaps the season for the markets, particularly for the night market need to be extended. The square ought to have movable chairs and tables – yes, even in the winter. Similarly, Mellon square has been completely abandoned for the winter months – being roped off (although it sports a few desultory chairs). The local Conservancy has posted a sign saying it has thrown in the towel on keeping the space safe to use in the off-season. As I’ve noted in the past, I’m wary of flying into town for an overnight trip and making judgements on local decisions, but in my book closing off a major downtown public space is a bad business. My thought is that the resources ought to be found to program and maintain Mellon Square year-round.
I also noticed a number of interesting lighting features around the cultural district. Here is another example of why critical mass is so important. On their own they have very little impact. A more extensive program of light features that are within view of each other can make an important contribution to animating public space during the long, dark periods of winter. There need to be more of them!
Also remarkable are the narrow streets, like Fourth Avenue, with a wonderful array of architecturally significant structures, many converted or in the process of being converted to housing. Those structures, built as headquarters for financial institutions, were not designed to host first floor retail activity, so, much like the office canyons of Downtown Manhattan, they will be problematic to animate. This presents a issue for the perception of safety and quality of life downtown.
Similarly, while there are many beautiful and interesting buildings downtown, there are also a great many generic taxpayers, with either empty or obsolete retail uses. This, perhaps, is where the Cultural Trust can play a major role in continuing to build a critical mass of lively ground floor uses in the cultural district, like Vine Street down the river in Cincinnati, which then might spread more widely around downtown. Frankly, downtown needs more to attract more shoppers. The street level Phillip Injeian Violin shop is the kind of funky use that needs encouragement to flourish. Even with its two dozen or so modern office towers scattered throughout the downtown (notably, the US Steel Tower [Harrison, Abramowitz, 1988]) Pittsburgh has the potential for a truly twenty-four-hour mixed-use downtown. Those towers, while breaking up the continuity of the street wall, provide a density of potential shoppers, eaters and drinkers that could be essential to retail success.
Pittsburgh’s evolution, taking advantage of the wave of urban revitalization of the last two decades is gratifying. It has built on its legacy institutions to compensate for the loss of manufacturing jobs, to become a 21st century city. It is a great American success story that needs to be more widely recognized in a time when the public sphere is dominated by news of failure, decline and self-recrimination. My contention is that the U.S. doesn’t have a housing “crisis.” It needs more great places – and Pittsburgh is shining example of what that looks like. As recognized by composer Ludwig, we need more joy, and Pittsburgh, like its symphony, delivers it. The beauty part is that there is room for Pittsburgh to grow (its metro once had 400,000 more residents) and continue to expand its appeal.
American Urbanist: How William H. Whyte’s Unconventional Wisdom Reshaped Public Life, Richard K. Rein, Island Press, 2022.
Richard K. Rein has written a much needed, well researched, beautifully composed biography of William H. Whyte. That, I hope is a clear, declarative sentence of the sort which Rein tells us Whyte would have encouraged and approved. Rein not only skillfully relates the story of an important, if much neglected, thinker on a wide range of social phenomenon, but also puts in the hard journalistic work of drawing together the many seemingly disparate strands of his life’s varied work to highlight its significance. Of course, Whyte was the mastermind of the revitalization of Bryant Park and the careful observer of human behavior in public spaces. But he did so much else. He was the author of one of the most influential books of the 1950’s in the U.S., The Organizational Man, which described the social forces within the new, post-war, highly successful American corporations (and other large institutions) then dominating life in the West. Whyte, according to Rein, created the vehicle of the conservation easement, a key tool in preserving not just open space, but also structures of historic and architectural significance. He enlisted in the Marines, saw action at Guadalcanal and went on to do important strategic thinking for the military. He was influential in shaping the character of Fortune Magazine, an important cultural force in America in the 1940’s and fifties. And, perhaps, most unrecognized, Whyte encouraged and published the work of Jane Jacobs who, while acknowledging Whyte’s contribution to her work, thinking, writing and career, obscured recognition of Whyte’s major cultural, social and political impact.
Whyte worked quietly. He rejected being the leader of any kind of movement. His work was based on careful observation of social phenomenon, notably using time-lapsed photography in his research in seeking out patterns of human behavior in public spaces. Also key to his technique was listening. He placed a high value on encouraging and heeding what citizens contribute to public decision-making processes about local issues. He was, unusually, a highly disruptive thinker, without being a disruptive person. He was culturally part of New York’s establishment – a denizen of the prestigious and exclusive Century Association on West 43rd Street for fifty years. He was supported by Rockefeller related organizations and Laurence Rockefeller personally for decades. Fortune Magazine was a bedrock institution of the mid-20th Century American corporate establishment. But in his good humored, wry way, he didn’t hold back. He shared with the world the conclusions he drew from the data he reviewed, even if they seemed incredible and at odds with the prevailing conventional wisdom. His work from the 40’s on was about making social institutions more effective by challenging their first principles, without threatening their powerful principals. His insights were usually spot on, and not just intelligent – but useful. His personal example, philosophy and modus operandi remain highly relevant and important, even more important, today. His self-abnegation, kindness, thoughtfulness and seriousness of purpose are exactly what our public realm needs more of.
Whyte came from the world of WASP privilege (St. Andrews School, Princeton University), enlisted to serve his country in combat and made major contributions to the American quality of life, particularly the return to the City of the 1990’s signified by the success of the reopening of Bryant Park. But, unfortunately, Whyte ended his life in semi-obscurity and not-so-genteel poverty. There seem to me to be two lessons from this arc. First, is the decline of WASP culture in America, and second the ascension of an American “meritocracy” that rewards aggression and attention seeking – qualities that WASP culture famously (and probably not actually entirely) rejected.[2] Rein, a Princetonian both by education and by current residence, gets this precisely right.
While a white, male Episcopalian, Whyte did not come from particularly great wealth. For years, according to Rein he was reliant on Rockefeller largess. He did not seem to desire fame or money – but did appear to enjoy operating at a high level – testifying before Congress, consulting with important government entities and writing in important publications. He, unlike Jane Jacobs, was not a rabble rouser. My sense is that Janites, who are particularly protective of the legacy of a woman whose professional accomplishments were remarkably ahead of her time, see recognition of Whyte as casting shade on Jacobs. It has also been in the particular professional interest of a number of strong-willed, skilled, self-promoting individuals who owed their success in large measure to Whyte’s ideas and support, to, while crediting Whyte for thought leadership, minimize his contributions to their own success. For example, Rein tells the story of how Whyte was excluded from the dais at the 1992 re-opening of Bryant Park, while Whyte’s work was absolutely the bedrock of that revitalized space’s extraordinary success. Rein sadly recounts how when Whyte’s health and finances were failing in the 90’s, unlike some others, he received little by way of financial benefit from that success. While the Rockefeller family provided him with philanthropic resources, given Rein’s recounting, it seems hard to describe that support as generous.
In addition, the simplicity and counter-intuitiveness of many of Whyte’s ideas (like the deployment of movable chairs in public spaces, to which the poo-bahs of Princeton University, according to Rein, continue not to get) make the essence of his thinking a difficult sell, particularly to the politically attuned. Urban planners and policymakers still see the implementation of Whyte’s ideas as risky, requiring the surrender of control, and subject to derision upon failure. While every major city seems to want a Bryant Park, few are willing to give themselves up to Whyte’s wisdom – of which Pershing Square in Los Angeles is a prime example.
Rein’s research is comprehensive and impressive. His journalism is impeccable. Whyte’s life history is recounted including many telling details. Rein, probably wisely, doesn’t attempt to sort out the current state of affairs among Whyte’s acolytes and evangelists. The complete history of the founding and recent changes at Project for Public Spaces remain to be fleshed out. Rein talks also about Whyte’s influence over the “New Urbanist” movement, which has, however, unfortunately focused for much of its history on greenfield development outside of major cities and has had little impact on improving historic downtowns. There is no getting around the fact that the public space improvements encouraged by Whyte’s ideas lead to what many now characterize negatively as gentrification, making people pointed to by Rein in the book as keepers of the Whyte flame, including at Project for Public Spaces, uncomfortable with Whyte’s legacy (and happier with citing Jacobs as an influence). The current situation of Whyte’s immediate legacy is unfortunately complicated by competing egos and personal agendas, which is ironic, but perhaps unsurprising, given Whyte’s personal modesty and soft-spoken manner.
As Rein makes clear, the power of Whyte’s ideas may ultimately prevail. Richard Florida, perhaps the most influential urbanist of our time, has begun to say that he recognizes that no writer and thinker in urbanism has had more influence over his work than Whyte. Whyte’s message of the importance of maintaining an open mind, listening to community members and the value of disruptive thinking based on factual evidence presented with humility and a willingness to be found incorrect present a clear path forward to addressing the most important problems facing the U.S. and other Western democracies. The need for the toleration of risk taking, and even idiosyncrasy with organizations is, perhaps, Whyte’s most universal lesson[3]. Whyte’s was a quiet but imperative voice to which we would be well advised to listen, as Rein so persuasively makes clear.
[1] With apologies and thanks for swiping his title, to the late, great David Swensen.
[2] The novels of Centurion, Louis Auchincloss, describe this process in detail.
[3] Whyte, himself, was occasionally described as idiosyncratic – usually by establishment types.
When I returned to Cleveland this past week, after a five-year absence, I was optimistic that Public Square and its environs drawing on our recently acquired national collective knowledge of what works in downtown revitalization would have improved. Often when I visit a city, I feel a bit like a colonialist, parachuting into town for a few hours, and making judgements about how the downtown is doing and thinking and writing about it based on admittedly limited information. Cleveland for me is different. I first visited Northeastern Ohio in 1973, and spent four years near there attending college. I’ve been a regular visitor (several times a year) since. However, I haven’t visited since November 2016 when I served as a poll watcher in Lakewood, a close-in Cleveland suburb. I haven’t been able to get myself to return to where I spent a miserable evening at a bar in a Mexican restaurant watching the returns come in on the television.
In fact, my first blog posts were about Cleveland after a one week stay during the summer of 2016. (http://www.theplacemaster.com/2016/07/09/photos-from-clevelands-public-square/http://www.theplacemaster.com/2016/07/08/when-will-we-ever-learn/). I was distinctly unimpressed with the city’s then recent $50 million redesign of Public Square, the city’s most high profile public space. And since that time, the situation in Public Square has gotten … worse! My recent visit included downtown Cleveland, an orchestra concert, and the Mid-town area, where Euclid Avenue was once the site of magnificent homes (https://www.abebooks.com/Showplace-America-Clevelands-Euclid-Avenue-1850-1910/30406229480/bd), and had over the decades become an environment of empty lots, liquor stores and derelict structures.
Public Square Ice RinkJersey barriers in Public SquareMetal ramp to deal with access problems created by barriers
Public Square was nearly deserted on the day of my visit, which was sunny and cold. The space was minimally maintained, with the only visible activity being the hanging of some decorative lights on trees. A cheesy ice rink was being installed – surrounded by unsightly shipping containers. The food kiosk was reasonably busy, but the picnic tables outside of it were completely unused. Most appalling was that the space was littered with concrete – planters and jersey barriers – placed in the space for “security reasons.” Why in the world would you spend $50 million to “improve” a space and then install horrible, unsightly objects – even for the best of reasons? There were round green planters (with one scraggly tree planted in each) to keep cars from driving on the pathways, and huge white barriers blocking carefully designed curb cut ramps, intended to make the spaces more open and accessible. In fact, one of the dumbest public space “amenities” I’ve ever seen were the flimsy, poorly maintained metal ramps over the curbs, to make the spaces accessible, since the original ramps had been blocked off and were unusable to the mobility impaired. How can this have happened?
Unused tables in the shade outside of Public Square food kiosk
I also noticed, since this was a late autumn visit (as opposed to my earlier summer visit), that Terminal Tower, one of Cleveland’s iconic structures, blocked the winter sun from the space during much of the day. The food kiosk was placed directly in that shadow, and obscured the view of the tower from the Square. The Square was mostly dark and windy.
In order to improve the level of activity in the Square, as I argued five years ago, the Square needs to be more heavily programmed. It needs movable chairs, especially to enable users to catch whatever sunlight there is in pockets outside the shade. It needs more stuff for sale, particularly food, in order to generate activity. A market would be great. The existing kiosk needs to be more open. It’s single rest room looks like a war zone. Public Square needs a more visible maintenance and security presence. The horticulture needs to be better maintained and designed (it appears to have been designed for minimal maintenance – a bad idea, badly executed).
Rendering of planned Sherwin-Williams headquarters
There is clearly a bunch of old, discredited thinking going on in Cleveland regarding economic development and downtown revitalization. Cleveland’s civic leaders believe they have scored a win attracting plans for a newly constructed headquarters for Sherwin Williams on what are now parking lots adjacent to Public Square. This, in a city with almost three million square feet of available office space, much of which is in architecturally significant buildings. The planned development is a 36 story, one million square foot tower complex, with no ground level retail, set back from the street. While, yeah, this will bring some investment and jobs downtown, and it is better for the civic psyche than losing the company to somewhere else, the likely net improvement in the quality of the experience in downtown Cleveland is likely to be minimal. I thought architects and planners have learned not to do this kind of anti-urbanistic stuff. The building is likely to be surrounded by a dead plaza. And senior Sherwin-Williams executives are probably going to be driving from the suburbs into the complex’s garage, having lunch in the corporate dining room, and leaving for the suburbs at the end of the day. Having a development that activates the street level would be far preferable, especially at this key location adjacent to Public Square.
Downtown Cleveland was relatively free of pedestrians on my Friday visit. I had a difficult time finding a place open to eat lunch. The major pre-covid economic trend in the downtown was the conversion of historic office structures into luxury housing. There is now a large amount of product apparently ready to come on line and flood the market, so the continuation of that trend is likely to slow post-pandemic – and isn’t going to be sufficient to sop up the tremendous amount of empty commercial space in the downtown. One unusual thing about the Cleveland downtown is that it has so much empty office space above active retail space. My experience is that downtown is livelier at night than during the day, particularly when there is a ball game.
Cleveland Gallaria
Downtown Cleveland has amazing historic social resources – including its fabulously beautiful commercial arcades. It is frustrating that developers and civic leaders have been unable to capitalize on Cleveland’s many strengths. This is particularly true because at the other end of Euclid Avenue is one of the most important health care complexes in the world, the Cleveland Clinic at University Circle. Also at University Circle are Case Western Reserve University, one of the country’s great art museums, and Severance Hall, home of what is arguably the finest American orchestra, and at the same time, perhaps the most acoustically congenial space for orchestral music in the country.
The Cleveland Orchestra is a remarkable institution. It’s existence in Cleveland, a city without the plutocratic wealth that has become a major factor in gateway cities across the country, is remarkable. Orchestra patrons probably dig deeper into their pockets to support the orchestra than any cultural institution in any other city in the United States. The philanthropists supporting the Orchestra are in large measure professionals (doctors and attorneys), rather than people in finance or real estate.
The concert I attended was not what I had signed up for. Conductor, Semyon Bychkov, cancelled on relatively short notice, and was replaced by Thierry Fischer, music director of the São Paulo and Utah Symphonies. Tchaikovsky’s First Symphony and Dvorak’s “In Nature’s Realm,” were replaced with Messian’s “Les Offrandes oubliées” (The Forgotten Offerings) and the Mussorgsky/Ravel chestnut, “Pictures at an Exhibition.” The Ravel Piano Concerto with 21-year-old Israeli pianist, Tom Borrow, was the sole survivor. The loss of the Dvorak and Bychkov were regrettable, but the addition of the Messian piece, new to me, was a plus. While the orchestra sounded great, the concert was a disappointment.
Admission to the concert required proof of vaccination and ID and the hall was mostly full. The audience was wildly enthusiastic especially after the coloristic Mussorgsky. I was definitely the odd person out in my reaction. I was happy to hear the Messiaen, written in 1930 when he was 22. Messiaen is a favorite composer of mine, and his influence on composers in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, like Glass, Saariaho and Reich, is yet to be fully appreciated. Hearing an early work of this composer, revealed much about the development of Messiaen’s distinctive voice. The piece, unsurprisingly, draws much on Debussy, without the cragginess that later became part of Messiaen’s signature musical vocabulary. Drawing firmly on his deep Catholic spirituality, it made clear how the composer developed his unique world of sound. The orchestra’s performance, as it was throughout the evening, was warm and glowing – by contrast with the edgier, brighter sounds of the New York Philharmonic and San Francisco Symphony I had heard earlier in the season.
Borrow’s rendition of the Ravel was showy, speedy and virtuosic in the worst sense of the word. It was essentially empty. The fast tempi he set in the first and third movements prevented Ravel’s humor and savior faire from being reflected in the orchestra. Borrow, clearly technically gifted, needs to step back and take a deep breath, less he end up a Western Laing Laing.
The “Pictures,” a Ravel transcription of a Mussorgsky piano suite, suffered similarly from an impulse to highlight its bright colors and distinctive effects. Having recently heard the Met perform the composer’s Boris Godunov in his original orchestration (rather than the usual souped-up Rimsky-Korsakoff edition), I was primed to understand the significance of the widely held, but perhaps mistaken view, that Mussorgsky was something of an unschooled musical savant, whose work needed the domestication of the musically more lettered in order to be accepted in polite company. While the Orchestra’s sound was nothing short of glorious, certainly avoiding the vulgarity that Ravel’s technicolor meddling encourages, the performance was ultimately crowd pleasing and unsatisfying; certainly more French than Russian in spirit.
I particularly admired the dark passion of the string playing during the entire evening. It appeared to me that the violin and viola players worked to produce a full, rounded, less tense effect. Similarly, the winds never blared, and in the French manner produced a characteristically complex timbre. Unfortunately, Maestro Fischer, in both the Ravel offerings, went for the easy wins, failing to capitalize on this orchestra’s particular virtues. The orchestra remains a wonder, and a treasure for Cleveland. I need to go back soon to enjoy a more substantive program (this, BTW, was my fourth orchestra to hear this season, including the two mentioned above, and the Philadelphia (whose Shostakovich’s entertaining, witty piano concerto with Juja Wang, was, in stark positive contrast to Borrow’s humorless Ravel) earlier in the season.
Euclid Avenue view
I had high hopes for the positive redevelopment of Euclid Avenue, the link between downtown and University Circle, which must be an essential element of a revived Cleveland. Bus rapid transit infrastructure, called the Health Line, was installed in the mid-teens along the length of the Avenue – and in 2016 appeared to be catalyzing mixed-use, mixed income development, particularly at corners where it had station stops.
Health Line stop
Significant progress has been made in removing much of the decay along the avenue, and grassy lots have replaced all of the derelict structures. There has been some scattered residential development, as well as a hotel approximately midway between downtown and the Clinic. However, the importance of density and critical mass to successful revitalization appears to have been lost on the developers and planners involved in Mid-town redevelopment.
The most glaring example of this is the construction of townhouses along a portion of Euclid, the most prominent features of which are driveway and garages off a service road set back from the Avenue. I get that Cleveland is a heartland city, where the car continues to dominate the market, but to build automobile-centric development along an expensive transit corridor investment seems like both backward thinking and a lost opportunity. Similarly, the mid-rise, multiple dwelling unit construction along Euclid lacked street level retail. As result, the development of Euclid so far will not produce a walkable neighborhood. Going to the newly built Aldi’s to pick up groceries will still require resort to a car (reflected in the store’s large parking lot). The door to the store faces the lot, and not the street. No one walks on Euclid, and I didn’t see anyone get on or off the Health Line during my couple of hours scouting around. Dense, mixed-use development at the transit nodes wasn’t happening. Development activity was spread out in non-adjacent lots along the Avenue, preventing the possibility of essential secondary, symbiotic effects. Critical mass is an absolute necessity for neighborhood revitalization. One or two transit stops should be selected for the focus of improvement activity in order to promote such effects. Nondescript, 66th Street has been selected for the focus of future investments, even though it did not appear to have any particular existing social, cultural or infrastructure assets.
One interesting problem facing Mid-town Cleveland is how small the number of historic residents raising the specter of “gentrification” is: fewer than a couple of thousand. Those two thousand people appear to have outsized political force in inhibiting the possibility of neighborhood revitalization for possibly tens of thousands of new residents, with concerns about changing neighborhood character and rising rents. Apparently, what those folks most need is improvements to their current sub-standard housing conditions, something that, given the small numbers involved, shouldn’t be all that expensive to provide an assist to. The value proposition for Cleveland as a place is its high-quality social infrastructure combined with low local housing costs. Attracting new, college educated residents looking for inexpensive space, while improving the existing housing stock for current residents – ought to be at the center of any redevelopment strategy for a city that once had a population of over 900,000 and now is less than 400,000.
My visit to the office of the Mid-town area’s local development corporation (one of dozens in Cleveland, all still supported by the declining Federal Community Development Block Grant funding), was delayed by my foolishly trying to access its office through the building’s locked front door on Euclid. The entrance to the building was through a huge, empty rear parking lot. To me this was a symbol of the old school thinking still governing urban policy in Cleveland. As one Cleveland leader cleverly told me, “we think in the IEDC rather than the IDA framework” (International Economic Development Council/International Downtown Association). That is, focusing on automobile-oriented, large scale subsidized development, rather than placemaking and transit-oriented, neighborhood walkability. Cleveland remains in the derriere garde of the revitalization of American cities. Leaders in cities across the country have drawn on Jane Jacobs and William H. Whyte’s thinking about how urban social infrastructure works and made great strides in improving the quality of life for their residents. Another Ohio city, Cincinnati is a great example. Not in Cleveland.
If I were running that LDC, I’d make sure that the ground floor of the building where my office was located had a coffee shop, restaurant or bookstore (which I would subsidize, if necessary), with chairs and tables on the sidewalk out front, and that the welcoming entrance was through the door on Euclid, to make the point about what is possible on what once was called “America’s Showplace.”
San Francisco is one of the most desirable places on the planet to live, both because of its climate and because of its amenities. As a result, many, many people want to live there. A good many of those people have substantial resources. A lot of those people are also highly skilled and/or unusually creative. That is why real estate in San Francisco is expensive. High demand. Step-function availability of supply. Basic economics: demand outstrips supply. Result: high prices. It is just not very complicated. And, more importantly it is a good, rather than a bad, thing.
Admittedly, my recent visit was on spectacularly beautiful, cloudless days. The adjective “Mediterranean,” often used to describe the climate, could not have been more apt on this trip. We went to North Beach for a classic cioppino at Sotto Mare, we took the bus to the Pacific and sat on a park bench in the sun facing the ocean (with no sign of the generally ubiquitous “Carl the Fog”), reading the wonderful new, posthumous La Carré novel. We took in the Symphony and the Opera. We lingered at the new Salesforce Park. I was ready to start shopping for a new place to live. San Francisco, another city, like New York, is often described by the punditocracy as an astronomically priced hellscape; inhabited only by trustafarians, over-paid young techies and the wild-eyed, violent homeless. Sorry: not.
We stayed at the wonderful Intercontinental in SOMA. The hotel has over thirty stores and floor to ceiling windows, with spectacular views of the City (many older San Francisco hotels are short and dark, with small rooms). However, the location, at Howard between Fourth and Fifth, exposes the walker to the epicenter of San Francisco’s un/under-housed population, which appears to be at 7th and Mission. The walk through the Civic Center on a Saturday night after a concert by the Symphony, while not dangerous, required passing through large groups of individuals sleeping on the sidewalks, selling things from blankets, with some acting out and appearing to be seriously mentally ill, surrounded by piles of stuff. Avoiding feces on the sidewalk was a non-trivial endeavor. There were pairs of men who appeared to be a private unarmed security force labeled “Urban Alchemy,” who appeared to be ineffectual. We also passed people sleeping in doorways in The Castro and other folks who pitched tents around highway ramps near the Embarcadero. My rough estimate is that the total number of individuals occupying public space we passed was more than 500 and less than 1500. Notably, in most other neighborhoods we visited, people visibly living in public spaces or behaving in obviously unpredictively ways were not present (Richmond, Sunset, North Beach, Glen Park).
It’s worth observing that it is individuals visibly acting out who most contribute to a perception of physical danger. People yelling at passers-by or even to themselves, punching the air, kicking the sidewalk or zigzagging along the sidewalk appear unpredictable. They create for many pedestrians the possibility of unwanted physical contact. These, perhaps clinically psychotic folks, can also be the most difficult to engage and reach for professional outreach workers.
While this sounds like a large population, it is by no means beyond addressing. Walking down Market Street, and particularly at 7th, it is apparent this is not a problem primarily about housing – there is social activity taking place among these San Franciscans that is part of what draws them to these locations, and their issues need to be addressed socially. At the same time, despite what I have been reading in the national media, there is new multiple dwelling unit residential construction happening all around the downtown, and lots of recently completed projects – even on Market Street itself. We spent an intrigued hour watching the process of the erection of an enormous construction crane across the street from our hotel.
We went for a walk in the expanding Mission Bay community, just south of the baseball stadium (the Giants lost the playoffs to the Dodgers our first night in town); a midrise, mixed-income, mixed-use neighborhood being built from the ground up. All the right moves seemed to have been made. While eating lunch in a parking space shed (kombucha soda, falafel sandwich — $45 dollars for two), I was reminded of our West End Avenue mid-rise neighborhood in New York, a highly desirable and successful product type. THIS is what Hudson Yards should have been. A vital, human scale place to live.
San Francisco needs to get past its politics and adopt a data driven, client centered approach to addressing the needs of its citizens living in public spaces. It should recognize that the issue ISN’T (just) housing and come to terms with that it’s never a rational life choice to sleep on the sidewalk. It needs Built for Zero and Community Solutions (https://community.solutions/built-for-zero/). It’s also important for the community to come to a consensus that people living in shared public space are monopolizing places that belong to everyone and should be available to be used in common. Someone playing loud music, engaging in commercial activity or even laying in a sleeping bag on the sidewalk, is EXCLUDING other folks from enjoying the experience of public space that, particularly post-COVID, we have learned is absolutely essential to urban living. No one should have the right to exclude others from quiet enjoyment of the limited resource of urban public space.
Creating a data base that includes a record for each client, working with them as individuals to get a medical and person history, building a trusting relationship with (potential) clients, and then linking them up with the benefits to which they are already entitled and the services they require. This is difficult, time-consuming work. But it can succeed, as Community Solutions is demonstrating across the country. In a city of 900,000, reaching a couple of thousand of people in distress, while important, is by no means a monumental task. It also doesn’t define the city.
Given the breadth of cultural offerings available in San Francisco, it is easy to forget that it a relatively small city. The depth of cultural and social resources is just remarkable. During our visit we took in an intellectually and visually overwhelming show of the paintings of Joan Mitchell at the SF Museum of Modern Art, a production of Fidelio at the Opera and a fascinating and engaging program at the Symphony. While I will leave to those more knowledgeable than myself to comment on the Mitchell show (Jed Perl has a long essay in the New York Review: https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2021/11/04/joan-mitchell-painting-colors-conversation/) and to my spouse to review the Beethoven (staying in my conjugal lane), I would like to talk a bit about the Symphony concert. In fact, over the coming months, it is my plan to visit a different city every month, hear its orchestra and spend some time visiting and thinking about its downtown. Next month I’m planning to visit Cleveland. I’m particularly eager to go to Kansas City and Indianapolis – places to which I’ve not previously been.
The San Francisco Symphony has been widely admired in recent years both for its sound, as well as for its unique programming under its music director of two decades, Michael Tilson Thomas (now, unfortunately, recovering from surgery to remove a brain tumor). Most critical observers agree that the orchestra is the most interesting one, certainly west of Chicago, and perhaps in the country. With MTT’s retirement last year, he was succeeded by Essa Pekka Salonen, the former music director in Los Angeles – and long the object of desire of the New York Philharmonic, of which he has made clear he wants no part. The program that the SFO presented was a knock-out, including Debbusy, Messiaen and Saariaho, following an important stream of French composition from the late 19th through the early 20th Century – a current of compositional thought to which I am particularly drawn. Under Salonen’s baton the orchestra sounded, sharp, bright and tightly disciplined. While it didn’t particularly convey that characteristically mellow, French sound for which the Boston Symphony, for example, was once known, the performances did great justice to the music presented, and at the conclusion of the concert, I was delighted not to have to peel myself out of my chair as a result of the enthusiasm of the brass section as is so often the case at the end of Debussy’s La Mer. Debussy also kicked off the concert with Prelude à L’Après-midi d’un faune, showcasing the distinctly personal playing of the woodwind soloists.
But the concert’s featured events were (Oberlin alums) Jeremy Denk playing Oiseaux Exotique and Claire Chase playing Saariaho’s 2001 flute concerto Aile du Songe. Both were outstanding. Worth remaking on is that the Messiaen dispensed with the ensemble’s string sections and the Saariaho was played without winds other than the soloist, setting up an engaging contrast. Both performances made compelling arguments for each of the works. Denk, playing this rhythmically non-intuitive piece from memory, demanded attention – highlighting the contrasts with orchestral writing, and stressing the exotic nature of the bird calls that form the inspiration of the work. Chase’s performance was theatrical and intense. In both cases the orchestra was a committed and skilled partner, making the most of the coloristic writing of these composers, without blurring their impressionistic edges. The playing in La Mer sounded highly rehearsed and polished, reserving dramatic power for the appropriate places. One might argue, after hearing this concert, that the harmonically complex, French impressionist compositional style has ultimately proved a more productive path for composers than the spiky, audience alienating Second Viennese School – which seems to have proved to be something of a dead end.
This engaging program is one, unfortunately, we would be unlikely to ever hear in New York, and it must be said that about a quarter of the auditorium was unsold. This was the sixth concert in a big auditorium we had attended this fall (two at the Met in New York, one at Carnegie, one at Chicago Lyric and one at St. Ann’s warehouse), and while masking is certainly a suboptimal experience, all of those other shows played to full or nearly full houses and I have lived to tell the tale (so far). Fidelio at SFO also appeared to be fully sold.
We visited San Francisco’s newest public space, Salesforce Park, which is on the fourth-floor roof of the new downtown transit center. The transit center is actually a surprisingly appealing bus station – a more unlikely application of an adjective I can scarcely imagine. The loading platforms are airy and bright – as different from New York City’s Port Authority Bus terminal as one might possibly conjure! The park is six acres (the same size as Bryant Park), and most distinctively features a fabulously wide array of plant species from Mediterranean climates around the globe. The creation of roof soil and irrigation conditions to support this biosphere, particularly mature tree specimens of considerable height, is absolutely remarkable.
The operation of the park by BRV Redevelopment Ventures is nearly flawless. The “B” in BRV is Dan Biederman, my former Bryant Park boss, who has outdone himself, fixing a number of the problems we faced on Sixth Avenue, with the possibilities presented by ground-up new construction – particularly an attractively designed and appropriate performance area, something that Bryant Park lacked from day one. The park incorporates the successful Bryant Park tropes – movable chairs, well maintained restrooms, a complete slate of daily programs, a working water feature, meticulous trash removable and discreet security. The sinuous path around the space is often flanked by shaded benches facing the continuously varied gardens. The maintenance of those complex planting beds has to be a major undertaking. Bravo to Dan, his staff and to the design team for a massively, magisterially successful collaboration.
Certainly, the park can only be accessed by a one-way gondola from the Salesforce Plaza and a reasonably large number of elevator banks (and we thought Bryant Park was set off from the street!), making it somewhat inaccessible. I visited on a quiet Saturday – so I didn’t experience the park with a large crowd. But simply the idea of a quiet Saturday in the park is a luxury no longer afforded by Bryant Park, even on a rainy day. That inaccessibility presents the challenge for the park of becoming only an amenity for workers in the Salesforce Tower (now San Francisco’s tallest). But, unlike New York’s High Line, Salesforce Park is a real park (rather than a tourist attraction) which can be enjoyed in a multitude of ways (rather than being principally the experience of walking from one end to the other). It is a triumph for San Francisco and will likely increase in viability and strength as food and other concessions are developed over time.
San Francisco is a great, livable, vibrant city – and its real estate is expensive as a result. It has some serious problems, particularly its underperforming school system. Our reaction to San Francisco as urbanists shouldn’t be to denigrate or bemoan its success, but to work for the creation of more great places in order to enable more people to enjoy the benefits of living in a vital city.
