[轉錄] Witold Rybczynski, Makeshift M …
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作者: spacedunce5.bbs@ptt2.cc (spacedunce5.bbs@ptt2.cc)
標題: [優文] Witold Rybczynski, Makeshift Metropolis
時間: Wed Jun 1 18:33:32 2011
作者: spacedunce5 (顯示為單身) 看板: defenestrate
標題: [優文] Witold Rybczynski, Makeshift Metropolis
時間: Sun May 29 22:46:05 2011
p103
Ungainly and crude, the lowly shopping cart has remained unaltered for seventy
years, making up in practicality what it lacks in elegance.
Big-box stores [大潤發, Costco, IKEA, etc.] proved so successful that
they spawned a new kind of suburban shopping place, the power center. A power
center consists of several big boxes (as few as three, as many as a dozen)
arranged around a large parking lot. Unlike a shopping mall, a power center has
no small shops, the entrances to the big boxes are far apart, and if you have
to go to more that one store, you drive. There are no enclosed common areas----
shoppers are not directed, or even encouraged, to visit more than one store; if
you want a flat-screen television, you drive to one box; if it's toilet paper
you're after, you drive to another. The economic rationale for a power center
is nearby highway access and a shared parking lot; sociability, that staple of
traditional shopping places----even malls----is entirely absent.
p179
There isn't a single answer to the question "What kind of cities do we want?"
because different people want so many different things. While the majority of
us appear to prefer dispersed small cities, a significant minority want to live
in concentrated big cities, and a tiny fraction is prepared to pay the price of
living in the very center of things. Most of us want lively downtowns, at least
to visit if not to live in. Nor is it simply a question of individual
preferences; we want different things at different times: an exciting big city
when we are young, beginning a career, and looking for a mate; a dispersed
small city close to nature when we are raising a family; a culture-rich
downtown when we are empty nesters; and a walkable small city in a warm climate
when we retire. If cities are shaped by popular demand, one can expect them to
exhibit a variety that is no less rich and diverse than the variety of
Americans themselves.
p199
[The temptation of] an opportunity to replace demand-side urbanism with supply-
side planning . . . must be resisted. The urban lessons of the last hundred
years should not go unheeded. Small is not always beautiful, but piecemeal
urbanism has a long and proven track record. Effective planning should
recognize that while the market is not always right, an aggregation of
individual decisions is generally closer to the mark than the plans of willful
urban visionaries, however exciting those plans appear on paper. . . . History
does not always have all the answers----new problems do sometimes require new
solutions----but it behooves us to keep one eye on the past as we venture into
the future. . . . [F]reedom from history is no freedom at all. The next city
will include much that is new, but to succeed it cannot ignore what came
before. Linking the past with the present, and seeing the old anew, has always
been part of our improvised urban condition.
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