Urban Design for Successful Cities: Alexandros Washburn at TEDxEQChCh

Alexandra's washburn chief urban designer of the city of New York a very big hand please for allagadda oh my god I've been here 24 hours I feel like I know you all I think when you meet one kiwi you meet a hundred or or 300 in this case I think the reason I know you is that I'm very lucky to have an associate back in New York in urban design division and she's a Kiwi her name's Sky's Skye Duncan we like to say sky's the limit she's an extraordinary person with an indecipherable accent but she's strong and she's kind and she's brilliant and I think I carry my thought of working with her to coming and meeting you and it's just been uncannily confirmed that everyone I talked to here seems to have those similar characteristics not everyone can be brilliant perhaps like Skye but everyone here that I've met so far has been strong and kind even the Jersey I'm wearing it was literally given to me off of Gregg's back here so I feel very comfortable here even though I'm very new to Christchurch and I wanted to see if we shared certain experiences and I know no one who didn't go through the earthquake can really understand what it felt to be in the earthquake and it's aftershocks so I was trying to think back to some of the experiences we had in New York that might might help me understand little bit and I was thinking really about 9/11 that was a disaster that we had and it's been over a decade now clicker isn't working but it really doesn't matter maybe it's better without okay you know the morning of 9/11 I'd gone early to my office in Brooklyn which had these beautiful picture windows is an old loft building that overlooked the Brooklyn Bridge in lower Manhattan and gotten there very early that that day and was sort of busy had my head down at work and a couple of other guys were in the office as well and we heard all these sirens and made me look up and I saw one of the towers on fire with a large plume of smoke coming out of it and you know being architects were very interested in this actually from a technical perspective because we knew that no one to date had died in a high-rise fire in the sprinkler building so we're trying to think let's see 1973 they were built they would be under a certain code that require sprinklers you know there seems like a really really severe fire but you know it's probably okay the fire stairs will work and we're seeing they're analyzing we're starting to take pictures and I saw this plane a dark plane moving fast and coming in low and us thinking well maybe this is one of those firefighting planes in the to drop water on the building to put out the fire and as we were looking at it of course the plane hit the other Tower and we saw the tower explode and we instantly realize what was happening it's a shock it's a shock when you know that you can't do anything about it the event is happening and you're powerless to change it but you have to deal with the the result so we stayed and watched a bit and the events unfolded and then the emotions of course start kicking in this was also 9/11 was the first day of school for my my eldest daughter who's back in Manhattan in Greenwich Village and it's remember that very very strange feeling of having to go back into Manhattan of course cellphones weren't working even the landlines no one was picking up at home and to have to go back through the crowds of people coming out streaming out on the Brooklyn Bridge covered in ash trying to get back in Manhattan find out where is your family how are they doing and of course you know thank God everyone was okay and we were able to rendezvous back in the apartment and then the period began that was an aftermath for me that was almost more nerve-wracking than the day itself because you know in the days that followed you didn't know what was going on there are anthrax attacks you didn't know if it was over or if there were going to be more shocks coming together and the no-go zone it was very large at the beginning and there were troops positioned all around the perimeter I was a bicycle commuter I'd go from Greenwich Village down through lower Manhattan and then over into Brooklyn and I was constantly testing the edges of this perimeter because it was my route through and I remember getting through one one time what would normally been rush hour and being on my bicycle riding down the center of Church Street six lanes lined with skyscrapers and I was the only person there and that's a very strange feeling to have in a city a city that's normally teeming with people and I think the point that was the scariest for me was one day when I was going through the zone and then across the Brooklyn Bridge we're typically they were troops stationed along with police and you know you'd salute them you occasionally chat with them thank them for for looking out for you and I remember one day suddenly portable toilets appeared that they'd be very panic for some reason I threw you don't put those there unless you don't want the people to leave and you don't want the people to leave unless you think something's about to happen and I couldn't sleep that night I mean I was just on edge and the adrenaline was pumping the emotions are going and of course nothing did happen and that passed but there was a period there where even normal decisions which route do I take what what street do I go down you would second-guess you would you would not know if you were making a decision given the correct weight because there was so much emotion there was so much anxiety of what would happen next and this was reflected in our politics so is it talk for a while of perhaps delaying the mayoral election thank god we've rejected that we decided to go ahead that November and have an election and that election was won by Mayor Bloomberg who turned out to be a very very good mayor it's a very rational man who believes you can't manage what you can't measure he also appointed Deputy Mayor Dan Doctoroff was a very good man and he made him in charge of economic development and recovery was his title but he unified under him several branches of the government including planning and economic development and several other agencies before was reported at different people but now gave them a unified point of responsibility and I think that's when we started to realize that things were things had to change and they were going to change let me see if I can get the slides going here now and swap okay good push up ahead here okay this was a very important piece of our recovery Dan had the thing that he called the virtuous cycle it's an idea that you needed investment by a city in the quality of life of a city which would then attract people an economic development and lead to growth that growth would lead to more revenue and if you use that revenue for more investment you could begin a virtuous cycle and in the early days of 2002 that's what we started to do as a government policy as a framework for moving ahead and what's unique about New York and about urban design is that Mayor Bloomberg realize that we compete on a global scale and in a choice in a world where people have the choice of of living in different cities around the world they will choose based on the quality of life and we made an explicit commitment in New York to a belief in that belief is that you improve the quality of public life by improving the quality of public space public space is the place where citizens can meet as equals it's the place where society builds trust and it's also the subject of urban design I'll give you a short example x squared mayor bloomberg appointed a woman named Jeanette Sadiq Khan as Commissioner of Transportation she's a brilliant and energetic woman and she realized early on that she had certain powers as Commissioner of Transportation and those powers included the ability to restriped the right-of-way in any way that the department deemed beneficial so seemed like a minor technocratic Clause but it gave her the ability to go into Times Square which is the intersection of Broadway and 7th Avenue and to paint the area of Broadway as a plaza so by using paint she was able to turn this major crossroads into a great greater public square and actually give it for the first time in its existence a place where you could sit a place where you could enjoy the life around you and it was a pilot project so it was able to get through quickly and simply give it a try and you can just imagine the incredible political pressure financial pressure that were that hinged on this decision and it's a real tribute not just to Jeanette but also from Mayor Bloomberg for backing her up on this and the result is a place now that even local New Yorkers like to go to and it's just thronged with people and the traffic still moves so even though she's Commissioner of Transportation I think Jeanette is also an urban designer so I want to stop for a minute and talk about what is urban design not urban design is a tool of transforming cities it's what's guy it's what God is a change of cities and urban design produces rules plans and pilot projects that guide a city's transformation it's very important to remember that urban design doesn't produce the city but the tools to change it and urban designers that's actually sky there in the middle are the ones who hold the pen and work in the swirl of stakeholders and experts around us we're also people who have to work at the intersection of politics finance and design you can be the greatest designer in the world but if you can't stand the pressure of politics if you can't deal with the demands of Finance you're not going to be an urban designer because things only change in the city when those three forces align and design is the weakest of those forces in urban design even though we work the scale of the city the smallest dimensions matter so even the height of a curb is critical to the success of what urban design tool and finally in for public space if it's worth remembering it's worth drawing I think an urban designer really does have to draw you don't have to be Michelangelo but you have to see a place and if you like it try drawing it because drawing is what gets it inside your head and what lets you understand it in a way that's simply taking the photograph the writing a caption you can't and ultimately when you judge a public space you judge it from the point of view of a citizen walking down the street from the point of view of a pedestrian you know but it's the word pedestrian is interesting to me because in the dictionary it means dull or boring somehow but in New York you know pedestrian means fantastic it's fabulous and of course to walk down Fifth Avenue at twilight past Rockefeller Center is amazing but also to walk down Jackson Avenue on a Saturday morning in Queens it's amazing the life of the street in New York is a primary social space again it's public space it's where society builds trust it's where we meet each other is equal so let's talk for a minute about how you design the street maybe go to the board here alright let's start here with a person right they need a sidewalk to walk down that sidewalk should have a certain dimension for them to work and I'll use feet and inches I know the u.s. is I'll try to have some rough translations 2 meters but 10 feet say 3 meters is a good minimum distance and then that person probably would like some shade so you need a tree pit and the tree pit needs a certain dimension in width and depth so let's give that another 5 feet and maybe let's make sure that it's got about 3 feet of soil depth here you have a building on the other edge of the property line and what's the right height of that building here in your plan you've decided 31 meters is the right height would probably take us a little bit up over to here but you realize that this pedestrian here needs something to go on here right you need some sort of shop some sort of interesting thing to go on displays etc something that'll catch your attention I think every 10 meters is a good rule of thumb as you're walking down the street now you have to think of the carriageway alright what do you want to happen in the in the carriageway do we want to bike paths well you know bike paths let's say we'll take about no I don't know 10 feet say give it another 3 meters here maybe then you'd want some parked cars you know to have it shielded from the traffic so those Park cars need another 3 meters or so here and then you have your traffic lanes and you decide well do we need a bus lane how many lanes of traffic do we want we want this to be one way or two way each lane give it another three three to four meters one thing you're starting to see is that this space between the property lines it's finite and there are many many things that have to go on in here so to decide which gets built and which doesn't is a choice which is going to reflect certain values we believe that pedestrian comes first and so everything should begin with the consideration of the pedestrian but you know there are a lot of important infrastructure things that go on a street - you've got sewers right and those sewers have catch basins that come at the curb and once a catch basin gets built you can't move it it's too expensive so right now what's going on in the streets of Christchurch it's pretty critical that this sewer this catch basin and a sense of what's going on in the street be coordinated because you can't change it afterwards you know the fire department is going to want a certain width for the carriageway because they'd like to be able to bring their fire trucks up and they have things called tormenters which stick out and they need to have their ladders that go up well that has to work with the overall width and you've got to make choices about what fits and the fire department also should know that you can't just keep - why the street because then you're going to lose the energy of it so this is just a quick primer and I see you've got just a few minutes left so it's a tremendously fun thing to design the city and these are some of the elements that you have to do and realise an urban design or I don't control any of those elements I only try to influence them so let's go now and ask if this is how we design the street you know you see if you get the hierarchy right you can end up with a very very beautiful street but how about putting this all together to make an entire district so I'm going to show you something about the High Line which is an elevated railway in New York that was built by Robert Moses in the 1930s in the Chelsea district of Manhattan now this roadway I was going to be torn down and because the people who own the land underneath it wanted to develop that land and at a community board meeting to discuss that demolition - guys Joshua David and Robert Hammond met the regular guys who weren't urban designers they weren't architects they're just people who like this structure thought something should be done and they made an organization called the Friends of the High Line well the Friends of the High Line had is one of its members Amanda burden she's my boss she was appointed by Mayor Bloomberg as head of the Planning Commission that's very good to be brilliant as well as beautiful but what Amanda did was set all the tools of planning available to us through the laws of zoning to save this High Line turn it into a park but in the process to also change the neighborhood to make extra housing available in the neighborhood to preserve the good things in the neighborhood there are certain galleries that are already grown there and to encourage a mix of use in the neighborhood that was absent before it was zoned previously only residential I mean only manufacturing and then it also was very important that whatever new got built didn't detract from the new part but would enhance it so it was a pretty interesting zoning exercise where we changed the zoning at the perimeter of the neighborhood and there were the High Line was we designated a transfer district and then allowed the air rights from the High Line to be transferred out to these other new buildings at the perimeter which let the people who had land under the High Line now it took away their incentive for wanting to tear it down so it required a lot of drawing to figure out what the right relationship of buildings to the High Line would be and we came up with certain rules that would hopefully enhance the light and the air and the experience of walking down as you build new buildings and we took the the district this Chalcis special West Chelsea district and designed out what the development should look like in the pathway to move these air rights and the result with some pretty great buildings this is the box here that's the air rights that were allowed to be transferred off the High Line since the High Line was saved and moved to this building at the edge of the district and what happened was this transfer mechanism developed of a legal and economic framework that allowed great buildings to be built in the High Line to be preserved as a park the results are pretty spectacular over three and point six million square feet of new building two billion dollars of investment more than two and a half thousand job a twelve thousand jobs two half thousand dwelling units the statistics roll on and on it's a home run it's more than a ten to one return on investment for the public money that went into it and the results are fantastic quality of life at ground level with galleries and cafes and a terrific sense of nature in the middle of the city and I think we can turn off the slides right now and I can just conclude very quickly I've given this talk about the High Line hundred times in great detail to planners and technical technical people and governments and developers etc and I'd forgotten until I was preparing for this lecture about when we did it I found of looking through some boxes and I found an old security pass that said 611 it was for June 11th 2001 and it was for meeting in the World Trade Center and that was a meeting where we were trying to get politicians together with finance ears together with friends of the High Line through the design trust for public spaces and it suddenly occurred to me that some of the most important decisions for getting the High Line built were done in the aftermath of 9/11 they were done at a time when we had to think clearly but it was hard to do that the emotion the framework of the virtuous cycle gave us direction and in retrospect I can only think what if we hadn't taken that direction what if we had said that public space was too dangerous that because of threats needed to close it down we didn't want people what if we hadn't decided that public space was so important to the quality of life of a city and thinking back I know do you know that phrase I fear nothing because I hope for nothing well it's absolutely the attitude you can't have as an urban designer you have to hope for something greater tomorrow than what you have today and you have to be prepared to accept the fear and uncertainty that comes with that but it's a decision that has to be made and when the people are making it are strong and kind I think it will be the right decision thank you

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 95,043

Keywords: ted talks, Christchurch, tedx, New Zealand, English, tedx talk, TEDxEQChCh, ted x, tedx talks, ted talk, New Zealand (Country), Alexandros Washburn, New York, pedestrians, urban design, sustainable cities, Times Square, ted

Id: rIJgV7EaUEE

Length: 25min 25sec (1525 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 18 2012