saving old buildings and neighborhoods is essential to the continued vitality of great cities
In the early 1990s, Shanghai organized a special economic zone that led to the development of a financial hub in Pudong, on land previously occupied by warehouses and wharves. Towers sprouted to create an instant iconic skyline, but with a regrettable, scaleless urban moonscape below.
Should we in New York in 2013 emulate the Shanghai of the 1990s? Or should we heed the lesson the Chinese themselves have subsequently learned, that saving old buildings and neighborhoods is essential to the continued vitality of great cities? In Shanghai, the pre-World War II buildings along the Bund, which loom so very large in the city's appeal, have been saved and repurposed. Nearby, at Xintiandi, a historic residential neighborhood of stone houses and tight alleys has been transformed into a chic, walkable retail and entertainment district.
Terminal City, a sophisticated mix of hotels, clubs, office buildings and residential blocks at the heart of East Midtown, was built on platforms bridging the rail yards north of Grand Central. It was a bold plan to create valuable real estate where once there had been urban blight. As much as anything, this development created what the world knows today as Midtown Manhattan.
-- Robert A. M. Stern
SoHo and the Flatiron district were two of the most moribund parts of the city in the 1960s and '70s; once they were designated as historic districts, the fortunes that poured in made them more vital than ever.
We can do the same in East Midtown. The historic hotels and older office buildings of Terminal City could be repurposed for residential uses (and, I might add, the Yale Club is doing just fine). Some of these older buildings, their futures uncertain, may look a little dowdy today, but I'm confident that the stability that landmark designation provides would lead owners and developers to rediscover their intrinsic value.
Our diversity, and the fact that we don't look like Pudong, is the reason many creative types choose New York over the bland banalities of Silicon Valley, just as in London, they've chosen Clerkenwell over Canary Wharf, and in Paris, just about anywhere over La Défense.