100 Ideas for New York

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100 Ideas for New York

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New York is our city.It is, in fact, simply ‘the City’ to anyone who grew up nearby, lives within its borders (but outside of Manhattan) or just won’t admit that there could be any other worthy of the moniker. While growing up just north of the City, I, like many, assumed, that everyone lived near a city like ours; mine was just a place called New York. I was 18 before realizing that no one lived near anything like New York.There is nothing like New York.We love it, survey with suspicion those who even question it’s preeminence as the only World City and, though we love visiting all those other ‘World Cities’ we always swoon at the view coming home from JFK, approaching the midtown tunnel: Manhattan laid out in profile in front of a setting sun.Even if we live abroad we remain New Yorkers. Travel in any seemingly remote land, answer the cabdriver’s question “where are you from?” and you will make admirers and friends wherever you may be. They can hate America, but they love New York, in part because New York is not America: It is the City.Though we love the City, we don’t exactly admire it. When we travel we collect ideas for New York and simultaneously discard them as unworkable in the City: Velib Bicycles in Paris? Fantastique, of course, but it couldn’t work here. Marijuana sold in Amsterdam cafes? Perfect idea, but think of the chaos. Spotless subways? Yeah, right.We believe that New York defies any attempt at master plans, truly grand scale development or even something as obvious and right as streets without potholes. But this is simply the ‘NY whine’ at work. New York is not San Francisco, Zurich, Helsinki or Tokyo. We don’t expect the machine to work flawlessly, we expect some grit in the works. And cities without grit just don’t seem like the City.Grit is an integral part of NY, and it shouldn’t be any other way. But dysfunction isn’t and a lot could change to make the City much better without risking sterilization.These suggestions are not the ‘311’ variety; nothing about a particular street corner, or local noise problem. If governing NY is all about managing the unmanageable, these ideas are an attempt to give some perspective, and a small bit of vision, to the morass we love. Managing is hard enough, vision while managing is nearly an oxymoron. That our current mayor has done both is something of a miracle.So, let these 100 little notions (they are almost too slight to call “ideas”) seed an even larger list of ideas to make New York even more New York.James BiberNew York 2011

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James Biber FAIA LEED

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100 Ideas for New York

100 Ideas for New York

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